


A Blanket of Snow

by R_W_Daniels



Series: Flying To Wyoming [5]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Age Difference, Apocalypse, Bathing/Washing, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Lemon, Multi, Non-Consensual, One Shot, Romance, Sad, Violence, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 13:30:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7173827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_W_Daniels/pseuds/R_W_Daniels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The long nights of winter aren’t the only darkness Ellie and Joel have to contend with as they hibernate in a remote location, hiding away from the eyes of the world, waiting for Spring to come so they can finally reach the Fireflies and the end of their journey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Blanket of Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who just got home from his honeymoon! :-D
> 
> Glad to be back, but I’m not gonna lie: this one gets very weird.

**“A BLANKET OF SNOW”  
Prologue To Flying To Wyoming III: The Home at the End of the Road**

 

The snow was coming down so thickly that she couldn’t see. If Joel got much further away, she’d lose sight of him; his shape would be swallowed up by the white and he would disappear and she’d be alone, forever.

“slow down,” she wheezed. Her ribs hurt. The air was painfully cold. She was unpleasantly aware of every breath she was taking. She resented her body’s incessant need for oxygen.

“almost there,” he grunted, turning, waiting for her in the knee-deep snow at the edge of the road. It wound through the hills and trees, a clear, smooth river of white carving a path across the heart of the ancient evergreen forest. The blacktop slept beneath the snow. It wouldn’t come out of hibernation until spring. “See?” he said, not really asking, pointing numbly at a sign rising up from the snow on spindly metal legs. Icicles formed a long, toothy line along the bottom of the green rectangle.

                   CO 119  
         ← ROLLINSVILLE    2  
         ← BLACKHAWK   16  
         → NEDERLAND      3

 “jus’ two more miles,” he gasped. Like her, he was nearing exhaustion. When he had woken up and found her missing, adrenaline got him moving, carried him into David’s town. Fury allowed him to carve his way through every man that blocked his path to her. Willpower alone had kept him moving as they fled the town of cannibals. But even someone as inhumanly gruff and grumpy as Joel had his limits. He couldn’t stand in one spot for long; he’d lose his momentum. He was slumping as she staggered up to him. “c’mon,” he groaned. “almost there.”

“joel,” she panted, hating the words she was about to say. “i can’t do it… i jus’ can’t fuckin’ do it…”

“ellie… we hafta… keep movin’…”

“can’t” she groaned, not whining, not angry, too tired for either. She sank down to one knee. If she could just rest for a while, lay down in the snow for an hour, then she’d have the energy to keep up. Why wouldn’t he let her rest?

Big, clumsy hands pulled her up to stand on feet she couldn’t feel. She wobbled, teetered, knew that she was going to fall over like a felled tree brought down by a bearded, handsome lumberjack wearing a flannel shirt that she sometimes slept in, a rugged man with a hole in his side stitched up weeks ago by scared, shaking hands. She would have been angry with him if she could have felt anything at that moment.

“up,” he insisted.

“‘kay… but jus’… f’r a minute… then i’m layin’ down… f’r a while… ass.”

The snow was coming down hard. He’d told her earlier that it would erase their tracks. If anyone from the town had tried to follow them, they wouldn’t have been able to. This was their chance to disappear and get away clean. They’d made it back to the little house that Ellie had turned into their winter shelter while Joel convalesced. The few possessions they had were piled up in the little fortress she’d made of the basement: The multi-fuel camp stove, almost out of gas; the solar powered LED light; her army blanket; another quilted blanket she scrounged up; three cans of food that she had been saving for an emergency, for when things got really, really bad; and the precious, lifesaving penicillin she’d traded the deer and her soul for. Everything else was gone, used up, empty and discarded. The sleeping bag, the tent, the rope, all his best stuff, cut up and sliced up and used to wrap him up and keep him warm on the sled behind the horse, as she made the trek out of Boulder and into the nearby suburbs. The horse was gone too, a loyal friend entrusted with all her secrets, carved up and served up as dinner to all the sick fuckers living on the shore of that big, pretty, scary, frozen lake.

Ellie had tried to explain to Joel why the horse was gone and why she’d had to cut up the sleeping bag and the rope, but he didn’t listen. There wasn’t time, she knew that, but she still needed to tell him. He’d stuffed the few things still of use to them into his pack, rolled up the blue tarp that she had laced him up so snug inside on the sled she’d made from a port-a-pottie door and some skis she’d found at the sporting goods store in the mall, and shoved the big blue wad into her pack. There was plenty of room in there now. Most of her food and bullets were gone. Joel hadn’t even asked about the skis and the big blue pottie door piled in the corner of the garage where she’d kept the horse. She had hoped he would. She wanted to tell him the story behind that stuff. She had been so proud of the clever sled she’d made. But it was gone now, discarded like everything else in her life, left to drift in her wake until it sank, out of sight, swallowed up by time, drifting down, to the hated safety of the dark depths where you did all you could to keep it from ever bubbling up again. That’s how he did it. She knew she’d have to do that too. If she expected a pat on the head for being inventive and resourceful and dedicated and the best sidekick a lumberjack like him could ever have, she let it go now. No kind words were coming. He said them all in the burning steak house, when he’d found her butchering meat, leaving a meal for the customers who would be along for dinner shortly, courtesy of gourmet chef Ellie Williams. He’d said the words and so he didn’t need to say them again. Lumberjacks don’t repeat themselves.

“lumb’rjack,” she mumbled, and slowly fell over like the small tree she was. A tamarack. A red one. Cut her up. Put her in the fireplace. It would be nice and cozy and warm when she burned. Bad girls went to hell. That’s where all murderers went, especially the ones who’d enjoyed the terrible things they’d done.

Joel caught her, picked her up with great effort. Slowly, grunting inch by inch, he worked her over his shoulder in what the instructors back in Boston called a ‘fireman carry’. She protested, or thought she did, maybe the words didn’t manage to wiggle free of her numb lips. She wanted to walk. She wasn’t a baby. She wasn’t helpless. She’d spent this whole stupid trip trying to prove that to him. But draped over his shoulder, her limbs dangling loosely, she swayed back and forth as he trudged through the snow; all she could do was try to stay awake. Go to sleep out in the snow and you die. That’s what he told her once, back when they spent a day in an orchard, all the trees grown wild but still standing in neat rows, their leaves still mostly green, delicious red apples just lying there in the warm grass, waiting for someone to eat them. She’d eaten as many as she could squeeze into her stomach. He had told her about how he had made it into the Boston QZ in the dead of winter ten years ago, when she was just a little girl; him, Tommy, the guy named Big Matt, who seemed funny and tough, and another guy named Anthony, who Joel didn’t talk about much about except to say that Anthony had been quiet and good at what he did and not the kind of man who would ever want to live under FEDRA’s roof, no matter how bad things were outside the walls, so he had stayed outside and fought the army while the other three snuck inside. The trip to Boston had been really bad and snow had been piled up high, like it was now, so Joel had been through shit like this before. But Ellie hadn’t. This was her first winter outdoors, away from warm beds and hot food and radiators that were always a little too warm or a little too cold and never exactly where you wanted them to be and –

“hey, kid,” Joel wheezed, breathing hard, trudging through the murderous snow that was trying so hard to drag him down, especially now that he was walking for two, “didya know i start’d a support group f’r men with erectile dysfunction? for guys who can’t get it up?”

Ellie mumbled something incoherent. Her ears worked, even if her mouth didn’t.

“it was a flop,” he grunted.

She tried to laugh. Only a wheezing, dry sound came out. She shivered again, this time from happiness.

“… nobody… came,” he added between gasps.

She gave a thin, weak grin, shivered, patted his hip. She couldn’t feel her hand. It was a numb thing connected to the end of her arm, wrapped in a kitchen towel.

“nice,” she croaked.

He patted her butt where it rested on his shoulder, next to his head as he carried her. She smiled faintly, remembering how good it felt to be spanked by him in the little shack by the pond and in the bed and breakfast and she was vaguely sad that she’d never be on the receiving end of that amazing hand again. She’d been a bad girl, just like Joel sometimes told her when he was putting her across his lap, naked and in need of punishment. She loved when he called her that. It gave her a naughty thrill. And he was right. She was bad. She’d done very bad things. Terrible things. Godawaful things she didn’t want to think about, not ever, no matter how insanely good it felt to do them at the time. Fire and smoke and blood. She wouldn’t find absolution, not ever, not even from a million spankings, not even if he actually used the belt, like he teased her about sometimes, in the middle of the spanking, when she was wailing and crying and naked and needing it so, so bad. No forgiveness. Not even with the belt. He couldn’t help her. Neither could the nuns. There weren’t enough Hail Mary’s in the world.

The world was white, only white, no sound reached her ears, wrapped up tight inside her hood, not even the crunch of his boots in the snow. She was sitting on her ass, shivering, arms pulling her legs close to her. Her face was buried against her knees. Something hard and cold was pressed against her side, keeping the wind off her.

“j’l?” she muttered miserably. She tried to look around. Her eyes wouldn’t open all the way. Snow was caked on her eyelashes. Ice was forming at the thin, fraying edges of her hood, where the moisture of her breath turned into a hoary, thin frost.

He was several feet away, digging into the tall snow bank on the side of the road with an army helmet. The only snow falling now was what he was sending into the air, heedlessly flung by muscles that didn’t want to cooperate. Joel made them do as they were told. He was working as fast as he could. Ellie vowed to make her muscles work too. Endure and survive. She was not a quitter. Riley hated quitters. Joel hated quitters. She refused to be one. She tried to stand up, fell forward onto her hands and knees. She realized that she was wrapped in their only blanket. She crawled a few feet than made herself get up. She wouldn’t crawl like a fucking baby. If he could stand up, she could too. Fucking endure. Fucking survive.

“what’re’ya doin’” she mumbled, standing close to him without getting in his way, each wheezing syllable she made given a tremulous vibrato by her shaking body.

“snow shel’tr,” he rasped. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t have the energy to spare.

She watched him work, her body stooped, wobbling, clutching the blanket to her shivering frame. She wanted to lie down so bad. She wanted to cry but the tears would freeze on her cheeks and she wouldn’t be able to hide them. No point in tears anyway. No forgiveness. No absolution. Fire, smoke, and blood. Hell awaited. Father Crocetti was right. At least she’d be warm down there.

Joel had dug a big square out of the deep snow, more or less three feet wide and about six feet long. As he finished carving it out, Ellie could see it was almost four feet deep.

“grave?” she muttered.

“shel’tr,” he grunted, scooping out the last of the snow.

Where did he get the helmet? She looked behind her, saw an old, rusted army truck on the side of the road. The big bed of the truck had once been covered by an arch of black canvas, reduced now to only a few, fluttering strips clinging to the corroded ribs. Old bullet holes dotted the length of the thing. Somebody had shot the hell out of that truck, and then set fire to it, years and years ago. Decaying black bones inside the truck’s cab, the door hanging crazily from one hinge, told of a pair of soldiers that had probably burned to death in agony, warm and toasty, a long time in the past.

He dug a deeper trench along the edges of the rectangle. She knelt down, knowing she’d never be able to get up again, and began to scoop out snow with rag-wrapped hands, fingers hurting, doing her part to make the pit around a pit.

“ellie,” he groaned.

“h’lpin’” she muttered. “lemme… h’lp…”

“g’over t’ them trees…” he panted, “n’ gather up ‘s m’ny… long br’nch’s… as y’can… b’shy ones… b’shier th’ b’tt’r…”

“bushier… the… better…” she mumbled, forcing herself to her feet. Mountains moved faster that she did, but she was doing the best she could, which wasn’t very good, but nothing was good anymore. There was no goodness left in the world. There hadn’t been for twenty years. Trudging slowly, silently, she went to gather fallen evergreen boughs.

She wanted to ask why. She loved learning. She would have liked to learn just one more thing before she died. But there wasn’t time and she couldn’t spare the breath, not if she was going to walk the twenty motherfucking steps required to reach those stupid trees and then another twenty more goddamnitall steps back. It was a nearly insurmountable distance and she was surprised when, after decades spent away from him, she finally came stumbling back to the snowy grave, a bundle of bushy tree branches in her arms.

“good… jus’ git a few m’r,” he nodded, taking the branches from her.

She wanted to kick him right in his ungrateful ass, but there was no way she’d survive the fall all the way down to a ground that was so incredibly far away. She was in low orbit over the earth. Her legs were like stilts, her feet miles beneath her, as she staggered back to the trees, wearily furious at him for making her work so damn hard before he’d let her climb in the grave and die. Nothing came easy with this man, not even death.

The last of the branches were settled into place. He had made a mattress of them at the bottom of the grave and a crisscrossed weave from the rest of them over the pit. She did her part, handing him the branches, one at a time, each branch weighing several tons, each one more impossibly difficult to lift than the last. Then she helped him unfold the infinitely large blue tarp and stretch it out over the pit, which spanned several parsecs now. Why had he built it so big? Half the universe fit down inside that damn thing it was so stupidly big. Dr. Daniela Star couldn’t have crossed such a distance, not even with her Zero Point Drive. Joel weighed the corners of the tarp down with the helmets and boots he had taken from the truck, each filled with snow, packed tightly so it wouldn’t blow away. The tarp and the branches were a roof now. He’d made a little home for the two of them underneath. Hobbits lived in places like that, she recalled. They never wore shoes and no one in Elrond’s court fully understood how brave the little hobbits could be, no matter how terrible things got for them.

“cool,” she grinned. She leaned on him as he took her to the little door he had carved out at the bottom of the rectangle. “home sweet home.”

He took off his pack and removed hers too. He tossed them inside, down into the pit that ran along the edge of the inside walls.

“be careful,” he groaned as she crawled down into the pit. Their blanket was already down there, spread out, waiting for them on the raised platform at the center. “don’ br’ng th’ roof down.”

“‘kay.”

He followed her inside, turning tightly in a circle, packing most of the door shut with snow he left just inside the entrance. Only a little daylight shone through, right at the top.

She lay down on her right side, the one that didn’t have aching ribs. Joel lay down next to her, on his left side, the one without the stitches. They snuggled close, face to face, wrapped up in their shared blanket. They shivered. It sucked in here, but not as much as it sucked outside. The really cold air settled down into the trench around the mattress of snow, safely away from them. This wouldn’t be a bad way to go. She knew from personal experience that there were much worse ways to die, screaming, jerking, flailing in the rain, losing your mind alone, all alone, without a friend in the world. Ellie would get to die as herself and not some pathetic, horrific perversion of who she had been before.

“c’mere,” he wheezed, wrapping his arms around her for the last time.

They pressed close, sharing body heat. She knew it wouldn’t be enough.

“Thanks for trying, Joel,” she said, her voice surprisingly normal considering how cold and close to death she was. “I really appreciate it.”

“w’re g’nna makeit,” he hissed, miserable and cold, not warm at all.

“No, we’re not,” she said soothingly. “But I’m okay with that. We tried as hard as we could. We really did, Joel. And we almost made it there.” She smiled, her hand on his cheek, his blue, waxy skin so cold beneath her fingers. “And you were nice enough to dig us a grave before you died. We get to share it.”

He was still. His eyes were open, unseeing. Joel was dead. She pressed her forehead against his, growing cold like him. The bottle of penicillin was still in her bra, where she had put it to keep it warm. All the awful things she had gone through for the life-saving medicine, and it hadn’t been enough. But it was okay. It didn’t matter anymore.

“And I didn’t die alone, like Sam did,” she whispered. “Thank you, Joel.”

In the dim, bluish light beneath the tarp, Ellie relaxed, let one last breath out of her aching lungs, and joined her only remaining friend in the peaceful sleep of death.

But Joel had turned over, facing away from her. She was alone on her side of the mattress. In her entire life, this was by far the most uncomfortable bed she had ever slept in but she was grateful for it. Hard and lumpy as it was, it was warm. She didn’t even know that you could fold a bed inside a sofa until she and Joel had found this old office. He had been thrilled by the discovery. The old mattress was clean, wrapped in plastic, not rotted at all. All the blankets they’d carried back to this room from the nearby houses were piled up on top of them as they lay there, or else being used to form a skirt around the perimeter of the sofa bed and its weird unfolding metal legs, the edges of the quilts tucked under the mattress, draped down to the floor, trapping a pocket of warm air inside, underneath them, while they slept. Joel knew all the tricks. She smiled in the darkness. She sniffled too. She had woken up crying, but she didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember the dream. That was probably for the best. All of her dreams were terrible now. Fire and smoke and blood.

“Dumont,” she whispered very softly to the empty room. “I’m in Colorado now.”

_I need to find this place on the map. Dumont. We spent a night in Rollinsville. Then Black Hawk. Then Idaho Springs. Then the snow started falling again, so we made our winter camp here in Dumont. That’s where he says we are._

_Dumont. It’s up in the mountains, right off the interstate. Fuck, we’re on I 70 again, just like we were when we spent the night in Zanesville, right before we found the Motel 6. We got on I 70 way back at Wheeling, where we found the Honda, and we stayed on it for miles, until we had to go around the place where the Columbus QZ was supposed to be, but Joel said they never finished it for some reason._

_Fuck, we probably should’ve stayed on I 70 all the way here. If we were gonna end up in Dumont, Colorado no matter what, we could’ve just ridden the Honda here and saved ourselves a lot of time._

_We wouldn’t have spent the night in that fucking awful snow shelter._

She blinked, the dream suddenly coming back to her.

_God, that stupid hole in the snow. What a miserable night that was. Neither one of us could fall asleep. I still don’t know how we didn’t freeze to death. But he was right. It’s been days and days, and nobody from that stupid town has found us. We disappeared like a fart in the wind._

She smiled, remembering the first time she had heard him use those words, back in better times.

_So glad you know about snow shelters and crazy shit like that, Joel._

She reached over and lightly rested her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t stir. He continued to sleep peacefully.

_Wish I could do that too, dude. Just sleep and sleep and wake up feeling good in the morning, like I used to do._

She sighed, a lonely, sad sound in the dark room.

_I need to look this place up on the map tomorrow. I really should. Couldn’t hurt to know where I am._

She sniffled again.

_Why the fuck am I still crying?_

She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. That was okay. It was her shirt, not one of his, the white and purple one with the long sleeves and cute red dog paw print on the front. She rolled over onto her side. That was okay too. Her ribs weren’t hurting they way they had been, in those awful days right after that sick bastard kicked her so many times with his boots as the whole world burned down around her.

She grimaced, rolled onto her other side, scootched close to Joel.

_He usually falls asleep flat on his back. Wish he was like that now._

She inched slowly towards him, careful not to wake him, until she was spooning right up against him. She tucked her legs behind his, slipped an arm around his waist. It felt weird to be the one holding him, instead of being held by him. She smiled. It was not unpleasant, just different. He was like a big, warm teddy bear when he was asleep, even better than her old Snoopy doll that she’d once had to have in her arms at night in the orphanage or else she couldn’t fall asleep, no matter how many times the nuns threatened to take it away from her if she didn’t behave herself.

_Sister Minette was such a pushover. How many times did she sneak into the room after dark with my Snoopy so I’d stop sniffling and go to sleep?_

Ellie grinned and nuzzled the back of Joel’s neck with her forehead.

_You need a haircut, Snoopy._

Soon, she was asleep.

“C’mon,” Joel was saying, shaking her shoulder gently. “Too much for us to do to sleep the day away, lazybones.”

“Rrrrrrr,” Ellie growled into her pillow. “Can’t a girl have a dirty dream in peace?”

“You were havin’ one of those, huh?” he chuckled. “Shoulda known. I know how you are, wild child.”

“No,” she lamented, putting a smile in place on her face, hoping it seemed genuine, sitting up, trying to stretch while keeping the warm blankets snugged around herself at the same time. She yawned. Blinked. Looked at him with sleepy eyes. “But how can I if you won’t give me the chance, butt face?”

Ellie didn’t have dirty dreams anymore. Not ones she enjoyed, anyway. She didn’t tell Joel that. It would make him worry to know how often she was brutally raped after she’d fallen asleep and gone to those places where he couldn’t protect her. The good sex dreams, the ones about him and her, or her and Riley, or her and Riley and him, didn’t come to Ellie anymore. She was glad for that. Sex wasn’t something she wanted to think much about much. Not for awhile. Maybe not ever again. She wasn’t sure. She wanted to talk about it, about all the things that happened during the weeks that he was in and out of consciousness and she’d had to be the one to take care of everything, even if she’d kind of fucked it up in the end, but she knew that she had to bury those weeks, as deep as she could, and get on with her life.

_That’s what I need to do. I have to. Just stop thinking about it, stupid. It won’t do you any good to keep going back to that place._

Fire and smoke and blood.

“We need to make breakfast,” he said, buttoning up his shirt, not seeing the flicker of darkness that slipped across her face. “After that, maybe we’ll take a look around, see what this town has to offer.”

“Sure thing, boss,” she yawned, sliding her legs out of bed, yelping in shock when her feet made contact with the icy floor. Her socks were not enough to shield her from the frigid torment. She reached for a shoe.

It looked like something an astronaut would wear, a hard blue shell with silver stripes and black straps. It didn’t seem to bend at the ankle. The sole was rigid, with no flexibility to it at all.

“How would you even walk in these?” she asked Joel, holding up the ski boot for him to see.

“Very carefully,” he snorted, amused. He held up a ski jacket, teal and purple, with while polka dots and a cute cat on the pocket. “I think this might fit’cha. Whaddya think, kiddo?”

“Looks nice,” she said, feigning enthusiasm. Normally, a ski shop like this would have held her rapt with fascination. It was filled with all sorts of interesting, strange things from the past. But she took little notice, for the most part.

“C’mere,” he motioned her over. “Try it on. It’ll be warmer than what you’ve got on.”

“Sure.”

“You okay, Ellie?” he asked, holding the coat as she pulled off her battered autumn jacket, turned her back to him and slid her arms into the sleeves of the new garment.

“Yeah,” she said, another weak smile on her face. “I’m cool.”

He was wearing a simple white and gray ski coat. She was glad to see him in it. There was no hole in this one. No blood stains on it. His blood, mostly, but blood from other people too. All gone now. Clean.

“So was it like snow skiing?” she asked, trying to make conversation. She was trying. She really was. Talking about nothing at all was so much harder for her than it used to be. “Is it fun? More fun than water skiing?”

“No idea. Never been on skis of any kind in my whole life.”

“Oh. Well, me neither,” she shrugged.

“I found some matchin’ gloves to go with it,” he said, handing her a pair of turquoise gloves that didn’t really match the teal parts of her new coat.

She nodded in thanks and took the wrong-colored gloves. Guys never noticed things like that. Testosterone made you at least partially color blind, she was sure of it.

_He’s trying. That’s what counts._

“This stuff oughta keep us good and warm for the rest of winter,” he said, pulling his own black gloves on. Several sets of thermal underwear, the high tech microfiber stuff that FEDRA never issued to civilians, was neatly folded on the store’s countertop, next to the cash register. It would be coming with them when they left.

“Good,” she nodded glumly. She was trying to be good company today, but she just couldn’t manage it. Her mind kept going to dark places, like it did all the time now. Fire and smoke and blood. “Kind of sick of being cold all the time, you know?”

“I know.” He returned the nod. He could see that she was hurting. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. He knew what that was like. He didn’t press the issue. If Ellie wanted to talk, he knew for certain, she would talk. No force in the world could stop this girl from talking when she set her mind to it. “Wanna head back? Or do you think we ought to check out the Taco Bell? Or maybe the Starbucks? There’s a Conoco gas station over that way too. Maybe siphon some gas for the camp stove. What do you think, kiddo?”

Ellie smiled at him, just a little, but genuinely.

_He’s letting me make the call. He’s trying to connect with me._

“Gas first. Then Starbucks,” she said. “I need coffee. Then we hit Taco Bell. I’m hungry. You can buy me a quesodallita.”

“Quesadilla,” he smiled, handed her the smaller sets of thermal underwear, watched her stuff them in her large, plastic shopping bag. It bore the colorful logo and slogan of ‘Scotty’s Ski Shoppe – Own the Slopes!’ Joel carried an identical bag. “Or maybe you meant quesarito, if you’re one of _those_ weirdos.”

She chuckled, barely, wanting desperately to be happy, like she used to be. She seized the opportunity. She didn’t know the difference between one Spanish word and another. Neither did Taco Bell, though she would never know that. But she’d seen the restaurant’s menu from time to time, in the various towns they’d looted on their way across the country. The pictures displayed over the counter might as well have been the food of the gods. It was not like she would ever eat anything from someplace as wondrous and magical as Taco Bell. Tostadas were only served up on Mount Olympus these days, and Zeus wasn’t sharing them with mere mortals.

“ _Obviously_ , I’m a quesadito girl,” she grinned proudly, mangling the word, head held high, haughty and fancy, as any discriminating connoisseur of fine Mexican food should be, before turning with exaggerated military precision and marching her way out of the ski shop, into the deep snow and the blinding light of day.

She had to turn her eyes away from it. It was too bright. Too harsh. The little slit in the metal door was the only source of light and no one had ever thought to install curtains in here. She’d been in the box too long. She couldn’t even remember what she did wrong that got her locked up in here. The heat was sweltering. She’d worked off her blue school uniform, one awkward inch at a time, inside the claustrophobic confines of the cramped space. She was in her underwear and she was still boiling. The heat of the concrete walls are almost enough to blister the skin. She had to sit hunched over, her legs pulled up. She would have given anything to stretch out, extend her limbs, and lie flat. How much longer were they going to keep her locked up in here? She wasn’t even sure how long she’d been in here. It seemed like forever. Had someone ratted her out? Sometimes she stole cigarettes and stuff from Sergeant Fletcher’s office, but that was only because the older girls would trade good stuff for them, and it wasn’t her fault Fletcher couldn’t remember to lock the door half the time. Or maybe Superintendent Nemeth was doing this for no reason at all except to teach her some bullshit lesson about discipline or perseverance or something stupid like that. Who knew? She gasped, panting inside the broiling box.

A shadow passed across the little slit in the door.

“Riley?” she croaked, hoping. Sometimes her friend snuck out to visit her. She did the same whenever Riley was locked up in one of the boxes. They had a secret pact about stuff like this. She licked her lips in anticipation of a straw being slipped in through the slit. Water. Fruit juice. A cold glass of spit. Anything.

“Hey, pretty thing,” a familiar voice whispered. A man’s voice, a little high, kind of raspy, cracking at the edges. She’d heard it before but she couldn’t remember where. “Naked in there, I see. I like it. Thank you for the show.”

She tried to scoot away from the slit and the leering eyes on the other side. She couldn’t hide herself. She fumbled for her uniform, but couldn’t find it anywhere.

“Why don’t you go ahead and take off that bra too? Let me see those pretty little rosebuds.”

“Go away!” she bleated. “Go! Or I’ll call the guards!”

“Pull off those panties too. Show me your honey jar.”

“Go away! Go away, you sick fuck!”

“I’m not joking. Show me that drippy slit of yours, you cheap bitch.”

“Guards!”

“You want out of there, don’t you? Well, you ain’t getting out, you little tease! Not until you spread those legs and show me some pink! Get your fingers down there! Hold that dirty little spunk pot open so I can get a good look at it! You hear me? Now! Right now! You’re gonna hold those lips wide open, you cunt. You’re gonna open it up and show it to me or so help me, I’m gonna come in there and staple those flaps open permanently!”

“Riley! Help!”

“She can’t help you! She’s out here sucking my dick! She begged me for it! And you’re next in line!”

“SOMEBODY! HELP ME!”

Keys rattled in the lock. The door began to open. A hideous miasma of light gushed in.

“I’m going to fill this black bitch’s mouth up with cum, all the way to the top, and then I’m going to make you lap up every drop of it like it’s a goddamn bowl of milk!”

Hands reached for her. She screamed, slapped, kicked.

“Jesus, Ellie!”

“NO! NOOO!!”

“ELLIE!”

She went stiff, eyes wide, blinking fast. She was soaked with sweat though the room was cold. It was the middle of the night. The buckets full of rocks from the evening campfire had grown cool. The warmth that had been trapped under the blankets she shared with Joel was evaporating all around them as she sat upright, panting, her new charcoal gray thermal underwear was twisted around her body, the top pushed up around her breasts, the bottoms down around her ankles, the microfiber legs had been pulled inside out when she had tried to kick off the uniform pants in her dream. Joel’s hands held her small arms firmly, just above the elbows. Her hands were balled into fists. There were red marks on his chest, his shoulders, his cheek.

“Ellie,” he repeated, as calm and measured as he could. If this girl had scared the hell out of him, waking him from a sound sleep, thrashing like an animal in a trap, he gave only the scantest sign of it.

“wha?” she moaned pitifully, scared, looking around slowly, bewildered, trying to remember where she was.

“Bad dream,” he said, understanding, caring. “That’s all. Just a bad dream, Ellie.”

“yeah,” she whispered, looking down, feeling very, very stupid. She pulled her shirt down with shaking hands. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She didn’t want him to see her naked breasts. She didn’t want any man to see her naked, not ever again. She didn’t want to think about the reasons. “sorry.”

“It’s okay. Let’s just go back to sleep, yeah?”

“yeah”

“You sure?” he asked.

“I said I would,” she answered, not sure why she was being so grouchy with him. “Not like I haven’t done it before, dude.”

“Alright, then. Fence is pretty high. Might be ice under that snow. Be careful when you land.”

“Always am.”

He laced his fingers together. She placed her foot in his hands, and he hoisted her up. With a grunt, she levered herself over the top of the fence and dropped down into the outdoor patio section of ‘The Earth Mother’s Garden’. The gate was locked in place with a miniature pitchfork, just the right size to hold in one hand. She worked it loose from the rusted gate latch with a violent, back and forth jerking motion.

“Fuck! That was really wedged in there!” she grumped, tossing the weird little tool away. With a shriek of corroded metal, she dragged open the gate and let Joel in. The high-pitched noise echoed off the nearby buildings.

_Shit. That’s not good._

“Well, if anyone else is in this town, they know they’ve got new neighbors,” Joel grunted, looking around, almost as though he could see the sound waves bouncing around from street to street, on their invisible trip down the valley.

“Not my fault,” she grumbled. “Blame the fucking hinges.”

“Nobody’s fault,” Joel said, but Ellie had already turned her back on him.

_Why am I mad at him today?_

She looked around, hoping to distract herself with the perplexing assortment of gardening supplies. There were large, ornate flowerpots, many still showing faint tracings of their formerly hand-painted surfaces. Long, low, wooden tables, not yet rotted into sagging, soft shapes, were piled with jumbled plastic box trays filled with the brittle toothpick stalks of a million dead flowers patiently waiting for the arrival of spring to reclaim their dominion. There were coiled hoses, watering cans, weird tools both big and small, exotic chemicals, bags of fertilizer, ceramic birdbaths, wheelbarrows, patio furniture, and even a small collection of gnomes, all standing together in a cluster, probably in the middle of discussing important gnome business when the girl suddenly dropped in uninvited.

“Cute,” she said, and trotted over to take a look at them.

Joel watched her go, relieved to see her smiling.

At the rear of the patio area, a large glass door connected this space to the greenhouse section of the store beyond it. Through the dirty glass, he could see the inside of the brick building. There were more supplies in there, ones not rotted by decades of exposure to the elements. There were no spores that he could see, and no sign that anyone had been in here for years. The glass door was locked but the big windows on either side of it didn’t look shatterproof. He took a garden hoe from a wooden barrel full of shovels, rakes, and other implements.

Ellie was down on one knee, studying a rather dignified gnome with a particularly stylish beard when she heard the glass shatter. She craned her neck, saw Joel tossing a weird garden tool away. Broken glass was everywhere.

“Time to go inside?” she asked.

He motioned her to follow as he stepped through the shattered window, his boots crunching on the sparkling bits of glass.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said to the gnome and gave him a friendly rub on his big red hat before letting him get back his important meeting.

Inside the greenhouse, it was a world of soft daylight. Three of the walls were glass, as was the ceiling, which was covered over in snow, muting the light. More rows of squat wooden tables served as home to an enormous tangle of flowers. The plants were dead, of course; not even a greenhouse could keep them alive in the winter without electric heaters. But over the decades, the flowers had grown beyond the confines of their original little square holders. Reaching out, year after year, they had entwined with each other, becoming a collection of colonies, covering first the table each colony began life on, then down to the floor, slowly spreading out across the concrete, until one colony made contact with another, then another, until the entire expanse of the greenhouse was a giant carpet of flowers. Overhead, suspended by wires, long rows of flowerpots hung in straight lines. Delicate feelers extended down towards the tiny jungle beneath, connecting the worlds, above and below, like the vines Ellie had seen in her old National Geographic.

“Holy moley.” A hushed, awed tone.

“Some of the glass up there is cracked or broken. See?” Joel said. “Just enough water drips in, I reckon. And every winter these plants become fertilizer for the ones sproutin’ up when spring comes.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this. Have you?”

“Not exactly like this, no.” He confessed. “Kinda pretty, huh?”

“Yeah,” she grinned. Another good moment. Another honest smile. She tried her best to hang on to it.

They stepped across the tangled carpet of dead stems and curled leaves. It wasn’t crunchy or crisp, like she expected it to be. It was damp, moist, almost like the stuff she’d had to shovel out of the composting boxes sometimes back in Boston, back when she’d been caught misbehaving.

“This place makes it’s own fertilizer, alright,” she said, following behind Joel. She waved at the air in front of her face with her hand. “Whew! I didn’t know flowers could stink so damn much.”

“Smells pretty good, don’t it?” he said, stirring the bits of roast beef hash around the cooking pan of his mess kit.

“Yeah.” She was glum again, like she so often was now.

The sun was setting. Several brick-sized blocks of soapstone were heating up in the big, smoky fire. Two of the blocks were shaped like zoo animals, an elephant and a zebra – Ellie had insisted on bringing those two with her. The gardening shop had a shelf full of the stone blocks, ready to be carved to order into any shape you wanted, right there in the store. ‘Artisan Quality’ the sign had assured them. Soapstone held heat a long, long time. Now they would be warm all night, every night, for the rest of winter.

“Start puttin’ those blocks in the stew pots, alright?” he said, watching with worry as sad green eyes stared into the fire and her mind went someplace dark again. Fire, smoke, and blood.

“Yeah,” she muttered, blinking away whatever it was that she had seen in the fire. “Sure.”

She took the heavy tongs they’d swiped from a fireplace on their way back from the gardening store, and carefully removed the hot soapstone blocks, one by one, and placed them gently inside the pair of big, ten-quart cooking pots. The little animal carvings went in last, right on top, and she covered each pot with a lid.

The containers were heavy. Joel took one. She took the other, though she struggled with it much more than he did; she insisted on pulling her weight. They threaded rags through the handles and carried them quickly up to their room, before the metal became too hot. Even with their gloves and thick ski coats, the temperature of the stew pots against their bellies was unpleasantly warm by the time they got to the top of the stairs. He sent her dashing back down to the yard to get their meals while he arranged the big containers onto square platforms made from single layers of bricks, one on either side of the bed. The bricks would absorb some of the heat and release it later, keeping the room warm a good, long while.

Ellie came running in with their food. It was still hot. Ellie blew on it, trying to make it cool enough to shove into her mouth. Joel took his time, like he usually did, and then fell asleep in the big chair. He was still healing, though he wouldn’t admit it. He couldn’t hide the signs from her. She could see how tired and weak he became at the end of the day. She watched him.

“I wish he would wake up soon,” she confessed.

“He will. When he’s ready.”

“But what if he doesn’t? What if he never wakes up?”

“He will,” the horse reassured her in his dopey, sweet voice. “You’re taking good care of him. And you’re taking good care of me too. Good work is what good people do.”

“You sound like Sister Anne,” she said, giving him a nice, long scratch behind his ear.

“Oh gosh, that sure feels good,” he sighed happily.

“He woke up yesterday,” she grunted, lugging the heavy saddle across the garage, leaving it to rest across the seat of a yellow Yamaha quadbike that, sadly, did not run. The saddle would stay there until tomorrow, when she would take the horse out on another hunting trip. “I don’t think he knew where he was. But he recognized me. I got a little soup in him. Then he fell asleep again.”

“That’s good. He won’t get better if he doesn’t eat. Oh, and thanks for taking that saddle off me,” Callus said cheerfully. “I sure do get tired of wearing it sometimes.”

“I bet. It’s heavy as hell,” she puffed, stretching her back.

“Not to me. I’m really strong. But horses prefer to go naked when we can. You ought to try it sometime. It feels really good.”

Ellie snickered. “It’s a little cold for that, buddy.”

“If you say so. Maybe we can try it when spring gets here. You can take off your clothes and leave the saddle off and we can go riding naked together. It’ll be fun. I promise.”

Ellie giggled; the horse was adorably innocent about some things.

“Tell you what,” she grinned, pulling the blanket off his back and draping it over the washing machine over by the back wall, “if you promise to keep an eye on him, I’ll let you have tomorrow off. I’ll go hunting by myself and give you a rest.”

“Better not,” he said, lowering his head and shaking it from side to side for emphasis. He spoke a little slowly, like he always did, searching for the right words as he put the sentences together. “That’s a bad idea, Ellie. Nobody is safe if they’re alone. You gotta have at least one buddy with you at all times. Every horse knows that.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she sighed, working the bridle free of his head.

“We’re buddies,” he said, working his tongue into the places where the bit had been a moment before. “We should always stick together.”

She hugged him. He pressed his head against her, comforting her in the way that horses did.

“You and me, we’re good buddies, Ellie,” he said. He was repeating himself, but horses weren’t prone to particularly deep thoughts. Simple thoughts could say everything that needed to be said.

“I wish I could find more food for us,” Ellie muttered, crying suddenly, her tears hot against his neck.

“Me too,” he agreed. “But there’s grass under the snow. And mustangs like me, we ain’t dumb like regular horses. We know it’s down there and we know to look for it and dig it out with our hooves. Heck, I wish you could eat grass. I’d dig a bunch up and share it with you. I promise I would.”

She choked back a sob. He was such a good friend. He didn’t deserve the death that was coming for him.

“I know you would.”

“Don’t cry, Ellie. It’s gonna be okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Joel’s gonna be fine. You know he is. He comes to find you when everything gets really bad, remember? When there’s smoke and fire and blood and everything gets really scary? He finds you and you’re together again and it’s all okay after that. Remember?”

“But you don’t make it,” she whimpered. “You die and you don’t deserve to.”

“I know,” he sighed, dopey and sweet in spite of what they both knew was going to happen to him.

“You die hungry and scared and running for your life and _it’s not fucking fair!_ ”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, flicking his tail in acceptance. “But horses are optimists, Ellie. Did you know that? It’s true. I don’t know too many big words, but I know that one. I know it by heart.”

Ellie smiled wanly, looking into his dark, soulful eyes. She stroked his neck, scratched under his long jaw.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said solemnly, “I’m a long, long way from home. So far away, I don’t know if I could ever find my way back. I sure miss all the other horses back in Jackson and I know I won’t ever see them again. And some nights, when I’m out here in this garage all by myself and you’re down in the basement with Joel, helping him to get better… well, sometimes I wonder if I’m the last horse in the world, cause that’s sure what it feels like to me.”

Hot tears flowed down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Callus.”

“It’s okay, Ellie. I’m an optimist, like I said. When I get to feeling all lonely and sad, I remember those songs you sing to me, and it makes me happy. Nobody ever sang to me in my whole life until you came along. So I think about those songs and the jokes you tell that I don’t really understand but I laugh anyway because it’s fun to laugh with you, and I remember that we’re friends and then I’m not so lonely anymore.”

Ellie sniffled, smiled, pressed her face into his neck again.

“And before I know it,” he continued, pushing gently against her in a horse’s version of a hug, “it’s daytime again and you come running up the stairs and we go off on an new adventure together. Heck, who knows, one of these days we might find some more sugar cubes. That’d be real nice, don’cha think?”

She chiffled, chuckling and sniffling at the same time.

“I’m so, so sorry you have to die, Callus,” she whispered.

“Me too, Ellie.” He nuzzled her with his nose, not blaming her a bit for any of the terrible things that were going to happen to him. “Me too.”

She cried hard, her body shuddering from the effort of it. Joel’s arm slipped around her in the darkness. Her pillow was wet with tears. She rolled over to rest her head on him and he made room for her. She wept silently into his thermal top and he hugged her close. Neither of them said a word.

_Ask me, Joel. Fucking ask me what’s wrong already, okay? Please._

_I need to know that it’s okay to talk about it._

“Something worryin’ you, Ellie?” he asked. Every breath formed a small white cloud as it left his mouth. This morning was cold and damp. More snow was on the way soon.

“No,” she lied, coming through the office door, stepping out into the world to join him. Things happen and you move on. She had to endure and survive. She was too close to the finish line to go soft and fall apart now. Winter would be over soon. She had to make it to the Fireflies, or else what was the fucking point? “I’m fine.”

“Well… alright then,” he said, not pushing the issue. He knew her. She’d talk when she was ready. “You ready for another day of scroungin’?”

“Lead the way, boss,” she said glumly.

“Alright,” he said, setting out on today’s expedition. “And keep your eyes open for any game. We might get lucky and spot a rabbit or a deer.”

“Found a deer,” Ellie said flatly. “Not much meat on it though.”

“What?” asked Joel, stepping into the large family room. Oddly, he had a big yellow and green box of crayons in his hand for some unknown reason. The old Ellie would have teased him about it, or at the minimum, asked him why he was carrying around crayons. This new Ellie said nothing. She barely glanced in his direction before turning her attention back to the note she’d found on the coffee table. He glanced out the big window with the rotting green curtains, scanning the white world beyond. “Where? In the yard?”

“Up on the stupid wall,” she muttered, hooking a thumb over her shoulder, aiming it in the general direction of the corner with the L-shaped sectional couch.

Joel looked. A trophy buck was mounted there on a shield-shaped piece of walnut. From the shoulder up, the beast surveyed the den with glass eyes, its preserved skin beginning to peel at the edges. The antlers were magnificent. Joel gave a soft, appreciative whistle.

“Twelve point buck,” he said admiringly. “That’s a hell of a trophy right there.”

Ellie snorted derisively and fixed him with a wounded, accusing glare. “Why would anybody do that to the poor thing. Bad enough we gotta eat ‘em, but why do _that_ to them? Put their heads on a fucking wall? Seems… I don’t know… cruel… you know?” She shook her head, looked away. “I guess you don’t.”

“Ellie,” Joel began gently, trying his best to be patient with the moody girl. He didn’t know about the deer she had hunted while he was laid up. He didn’t know how long she had chased it, running through the deep snow, following the bloody trail to the awful, awful place it led her.

She ignored his effort and instead she finished reading the letter she’d found. She wadded it up and shoved it in her pocket with a heavy sigh. “Found some kindling.”

He exhaled slowly, not wanting to fight about anything, still amazed that he was drawing breath in this world. For the first time in years, he was genuinely happy to be alive. He wanted Ellie to be happy too.

“Any information in that note?” Joel asked. He knew how much she tried to uncover the story of every place she visited, filling in as many clues as she could manage. One day, he was certain of it, this girl would write the history of this world, filling page after page of some great big book with everything she had learned during her lifetime. A new history, one he wouldn’t live to see. It was her destiny.

Lord knows, he thought, nobody else seemed to be taking an interest in it.

“No,” she grumped petulantly. “Just the usual bullshit.” She switched to a high, mocking tone. “‘Dear so-and-so, we’ve left for such-and-such place. Hope to see you there. God’s looking after us so everything will turn out hunky dory, I just know it. Hugs and kisses and shit.’” She sighed and looked out the window. Her voice was low and sad now. “Everybody died the next day and nobody found this fucking letter for twenty years. _The end_.”

The silence hung in the air. Ellie shoved her gloved hands into her pockets and looked at the many pictures on the wall: a happy family, all dead for years, no doubt. She waited, hoping to hear the right words. Joel didn’t know what to say. He frowned. So did she.

“I wonder if they even ate the meat,” she muttered, her thoughts going to the deer.

“You say something?” Joel called from the other side of the bathroom door.

“No,” she said more loudly, wanting to make sure he heard her. “Just talking to myself. And don’t come in, okay? I’m not done yet.”

“Wasn’t plannin’ on it,” he said, a bit wearily.

_He’s getting pissed off at me. I know it._

She exhaled unhappily and wrung out the washcloth in the sink. The water in the bucket was lukewarm and the soap, if it could still be called that, was a hard, aquamarine rock lying at the bottom of an old Cool Whip bowl. Joel had cut it out of the soap dispenser in the women’s bathroom of the Taco Bell a few days ago. It had congealed and solidified at the bottom of a plastic bag inside the dispenser, waiting for twenty years, and it still bore the creases and folds of the bag, even after she had run the softening warm dampness of the washcloth over it several times.

Frowning, she dunked the cloth in the warm-ish water and wrapped up the blue-green block again, working it around and around in her fists, making it lather no matter how stubbornly reluctant it seemed to be about going back to its old job as soap.

The bathroom was cold, especially to her naked feet, and it was large. The lawyer who had owned this two story building had two bathrooms: a small, simple one downstairs, available to clients, attached to the waiting room out front, where the secretary’s desk was; and a large, fancy one up here, at the back of his private office. Ellie wondered why one lawyer needed such a big bathroom. Three people could have slept on the countertop in here. The long sheet of glass that comprised the mirror could have been cut into a dozen mirrors the size of the little one she’d had on the wall of her dorm room.

“Opulent,” she murmured, using a word she knew but wasn’t entirely certain if she was pronouncing correctly or not. That was the problem with being an avid reader. You knew more words than you could say.

She hadn’t had a bath in days and days. She forced herself to take her time with it, to be thorough, but it was chilly in here and she wanted to rush. Joel was on the other side of the door. She had a vague, uneasy dread that he would come barging in, that he’d see her naked, that he’d want to touch her. She grimaced. There was a time when she wanted that more than anything in the world. Now it filled her with a queasy sensation and she did her best not to give it any thought at all. She rinsed herself off in the big tub, pouring the last of the clean water over her head. For a moment, she couldn’t see anything and she was sure there was someone in the room with her, watching, waiting.

He always watched her for a little while before he got around to fucking her. It was just a thing he did. She was almost used to it by now.

She was on the bed, naked, of course, on all fours. Her belly was big and swollen with the babies squirming around inside, the heavy curve of it almost brushed the mattress, and her tits were tender and aching, full of milk, hanging there like big jugs. She was going to have her latest baby any day now. She’d lost count of how many this one will make. Ten? Twelve? They never let her keep them. Somebody more deserving will get to raise them. It was never easy letting go of them. She didn’t even get to name them. But this was the price she had to pay for killing so many of the men in this town. She had do her part to help repopulate this place if the Lakeside Resort Community was ever going to be as strong as it was. She had to undo the damage she had done. He told her so, like he always did, even though she knew the words by heart. He kept her in the back room of the pet store. This little room was her whole world now. She never left it. He kept Joel in the closet. She could hear him thumping around in there on his short, stubby stumps. He couldn’t reach the doorknob, of course. Even if he could, he didn’t have fingers anymore. Food didn’t need fingers. Or eyes. Or a tongue. Or balls. Or arms or legs or anything, really. The torso holds the organ meats, the barbecue ribs, the prime cuts, the good stuff you saved for last. Once food was all used up, the head goes on the wall. That was what he told her whenever she asked about Joel. He said the same thing was going to happen to her when she couldn’t squirt out babies any more. Joel would be gone by then, served up as dessert, little by little, on special occasions, one holiday after the other, until he was just a head on wall. Then it would be her turn to go in the closet and wiggle around on her belly, all stumpy and mutilated and pathetic. But that was still in the future. Tonight, she was going to be fucked, even though she was already so pregnant that she was about to pop. She had to be fucked on a regular basis, to keep her in practice, that was what he told her and she knew it was true. She couldn’t get rusty, not about something so important. He unzipped his pants. On cue, like the trained animal she was, she pushed her ass up in the air. She would lie down on the pillow, but her aching tits were sloshing around, leaking milk, and they were too damn sore to squish against the bed, and she didn’t want to sleep in a pair of big, milky wet spots when he was done. He climbed onto the mattress. It was going in her ass tonight, he told her. She already knew that. She was too full of babies. He couldn’t get it in her overworked, overstuffed pussy any more. That would have to wait until she’d had this fresh litter. Then he could go back to getting her knocked up again. That was when he’d get really enthusiastic about fucking her. Tonight was just boring old practice, but he was hard and that was what counted. She smiled, happy to still be useful to him and this town for another few years. He pushed it into her ass, her cheeks big and plump and round, like all the parts of her soft, motherly body. She grunted, clenched her teeth. It hurt. He didn’t care. She’d brought this on herself, as she well knew. He began to pound her hard; the babies in her belly began to kick, upset at this disturbance. In the closet, what was left of Joel trashed on the floor and wailed with an awful, mutilated, wordless voice. Joel could hear her cries of pleasure and pain just fine, thank you. They’d made sure to leave his ears on. Empty eye sockets would be filled with glass when the time came, and the mouth would be sewn closed when he went on the wall. But the ears were out there where everybody could see them. No point in ruining a trophy head.

Joel’s ears heard Ellie. The sound brought him out of his sleep. She was panting, gasping, locked in the throes of a dirty dream. He laid there, his cock hard and throbbing, needing her. She groaned, arched her back, her nipples hard against her tight thermal shirt. In the dream he knew nothing about, they were huge, misshapen, as long as her pinky fingers, spraying milk with wild abandon like little rosy hoses. His eyes were locked on them, small tender nubs straining against her shirt. He remembered those nipples and her beautiful little breasts, and how she would squeal and squirm when he pinched and tugged at those perfect pink points. He made fists of his fingers and stared at the ceiling. With a slow, ragged exhalation, she finally lay still, fucked to completion in her dream. She moaned every so softly and rolled over onto her side, facing him. She was still asleep. Her face was like that of an angel to him, so pretty and peaceful in the pale moonlight of the office window. He lay there, cock throbbing, and tried to go back to sleep. He ordered his hands to mind their own business. They had no business touching the girl without invitation. And whatever happened to the girl before he’d found her in the burning steakhouse, shrieking and swinging that machete at the grotesque pile of fruit salad that had once been a man’s head, it had changed her. She didn’t invite his touch anymore. She barely spoke to him most days. His cock and his hands were just going to have to mind their own damn business now. Things between him and the girl weren’t romantic anymore. It was back to how it had been in the beginning, before he’d kissed her in the UPS truck and set this whole thing flying off the tracks by filling her head with all the wrong ideas.

He covered his face with his hands, pressed his head back into his pillow, breathed deeply, steadily, trying to relax. After weeks on the mend, this was the first, fully hard erection he’d had since his recovery. His cock pulsed, radiating heat through his whole body.

Ellie carefully wrapped her fingers around it. “Ooh! This thing is pretty hot.”

“Use a rag,” Joel yawned. “I do believe I suggested that very thing to you.”

She snerkled, clearly in somewhat better spirits today. She couldn’t say why. She’d just woke up feeling very rested for some reason. Her hood was up, the drawstrings pulled snug, and he could barely see her face inside. It was snowing today, not very hard, but steadily, and with no end in sight. “You can’t expect me to listen to _all_ your rules, buddy.”

As she talked, she pulled the freshly cut chain through the handles of the big metal shed’s door. The padlock, still clamped down to the links, still trying to do its job, dangled from the length of chain, holding together the original ends, but now bypassed by the applied science of gas and flame. Joel twisted the flow valve knob on the propane torch he’d found in the hardware store, hidden under a fallen display case where it had remained miraculously unlooted for two decades until today. The flame at the end of the tip flickered and died. There was still plenty of fuel left in the blue cylinder. With any luck, he would be able to cut through three or four more chains before it ran out.

“Better than a shiv,” she said, throwing the chain away. It landed in the snow and the hot ends of the severed links steamed against the ice, quickly turning it to slush.

Joel stuffed the compact torch into the big side pocket of his military surplus backpack, where a large water bottle or thermos might normally go.

“What do you think’s in there?” she asked, nodding her chin in the direction of the big shed. It was too big for anything as simple as a lawnmower. This had been somebody’s workshop, maybe. Or a doomsday bunker, if she and Joel were really lucky.

“Open ‘er up. Find out,” he said to Ellie. She didn’t need to be told twice.

It had taken more than an hour to trudge through the snow from their home in the lawyer’s office all the way up to the old house higher up the valley, atop the steep hill, following the twisting, winding road that ran alongside a frozen creek. It took less than ten minutes to get back home on the snowmobile.

“Oh man! Tomorrow, we are gonna haul ass all over town in that thing!”

Ellie was excited. Genuinely excited. Joel relaxed. It felt like old times again.

She tugged the blanket around herself. Night was falling and it was cold inside the office. They huddled close together in the warm light of the little camp stove.

“I can’t believe it even started! How the hell is the battery still alive?”

“Don’t need a battery,” Joel yawned. He hadn’t sleep well. His cock wouldn’t leave him alone. Things had only gotten worse when a sleeping, cooing Ellie had snuggled up to him just before dawn. He hoped tonight would be better, more restful, and much less lustful.

“But it’s got one, dude. I saw it.”

“A little one. And it’s probably dead. I’ll bet it’s just for the electric starter. It’s sort of like a dirt bike, I think. It’s got a carburetor, not fuel injectors. All it really needs is a good yank on the pull cord and some gas in the tank.”

“Arctic Cat,” she said, savoring the words she’d read off the mud flaps. “Such a cool name. So where are we going tomorrow? Salt Lake City? Los Angeles? Ooh! I hear it’s nice in Honolulu this time of year. I could be a hula girl!”

“That snowmobile was made in the 90s, Ellie. It’s almost as old as I am.”

“But you’re still running. I just had to slap some electrical tape on you, just like the old Goldwing, that’s all.”

He chuckled. It was good to hear her joke again, even if it was at his expense. “We barely made it to this town before we got snowed in. What do you think will happen to us if we hit I 70 on a forty-something-year-old snowmobile and it breaks down twenty or thirty miles from the next town. Long damn walk in the dead of winter, if you ask me.”

Ellie sighed, knowing he was probably right. “Yeah. I’d have a Joelscicle on my hands.”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Maybe we can use it to get around town. But the thing’s pretty damn noisy and there’s barely enough room for both of us on the seat. Hopefully there’s no infected or hunters down in the valley,” he said, referring to the parts of town they hadn’t visited yet. He sighed, seeing the disappointment beginning to creep across her face. “But… maybe… We’ll see, okay? No promises.”

She sat, poked at her slice of garlic Spam, grinned widely, as full of life as he’d seen in a month. “You have to admit, Joel, it was pretty cool shootin’ down that mountain on that thing.”

Joel chuckled, forked another slice of meat into his bowl. “Sure as hell was.”

“I can’t wait to drive it tomorrow,” she said, almost giddy.

“And who said you’re gonna be the one to drive my new snowmobile?”

“I called it first,” she snickered. “I’m Blacktop Ellie, queen of the highway, dude!”

She smiled as she gave it a little gas and felt the engine accelerate smoothly.

For the first ten miles or so, Ellie just leaned back into the soft leather seat of the El Camino and enjoyed the warm sensation of the sun on her face. The driver’s side window was down and a nice summer breeze blew in; just enough to make the edges of her long, loose auburn locks dance and frolic, but not blow them around so much that they got tangled. The old houses of the abandoned town rolled past, one by one. The lawns were overgrown with sweet smelling grass, basking in the light midday sun.

Bill was ahead, kneeling in the intersection, setting up a trap that was way more elaborate than it needed to be. Somehow, he has scrounged up a giant mousetrap, big enough to park a car on, and he’s placed a nail bomb in the middle and was busy covering it over with several big, open cans of liquid nacho cheese to hide the bomb because a trap could never be too complicated and too super stupidly deadly, right?

She honked the horn as she sped past Bill, just to fuck with him. It startled him, but the trap wasn’t sprung.

“Stupid punk kid!” he hollered, shaking his fist in her rearview mirror.

“So long, you crazy old fat fucker,” Ellie laughed with a casual, ‘fuck you’ wave of her slender hand.

“That could’ve been you if Joel hadn’t come looking for you after you ran away,” Riley admonished. “You oughta be nicer to Bill. Can’t be easy for him, being alone all the time.”

“Shush,” Ellie grumped, feeling guilty and not wanting to.

Riley continued. “I feel bad for him. Living all by himself… until he can’t remember how to live around other people anymore. Could’ve been you, Boo. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Shush, I said.”

“If Joel had died down in that basement, what were you going to do?” Riley asked.

“I don’t know,” Ellie shrugged, shifting gears, feeling the rubber pad of the clutch beneath her toes. “I try not to think about it, to be honest.”

“Since when did you stop thinking about the future?”

“A lot’s changed, Riley. I’ve changed too.”

“Is that why you’re wearing my clothes?” Riley teased.

“No… I just… They fit me now, I guess. That’s all.” Ellie hooked a fingertip along the collar of the light blue denim shirt and tugged it gently away from her neck. “Your stuff was always too big for me before. But they’re not anymore. So I’m wearing them.”

The light metal chain around her neck caught the sunlight as Ellie pulled the dogtag out from the inside of her white tank top. It clinked faintly as she held it up for Riley to see.

          Eleanor  
         Williams  
         000000

“Eleanor?” Riley deadpanned. “Really?”

Ellie sighed. “Marlene insisted. No nicknames on Firefly tags. They’re serious business and all that crap.”

Ellie pushed the gas pedal with a bare foot, coaxing a little more speed out of the old Chevy. Riley’s durable black combat boots sat unlaced, stuffed with discarded socks, on the cracked brown vinyl of the empty passenger’s seat. Ellie had the cab of the truck all to herself.

“So what happened to _your_ clothes?” Riley asked. “Why you gotta rub your dirty butt all over the insides of my nicest jeans?”

“I didn’t want my clothes anymore. I threw them all away. I got rid of all my old stuff. Everything. It’s all gone now.”

“Eew. You’re not wearing my underwear too, are you?”

Ellie laughed. “Mmmmmaybe.”

“Boo,” Riley teased, “you might be wearing my drawers, but I know for damn sure that my bras won’t fit you.”

“Shut up,” Ellie chuckled.

“Poor little white girl boobs, all tiny and pale and flopping around inside my big old woman-sized cups. Bet that hurts your girls when you hit a pothole. Stuff some socks in there, why don’cha?”

“Hush or I’m turning the station to something else,” Ellie replied as sassily as she could. “Maybe I’ll put Tess on. Or Sam and Henry. They’d be nicer to me than you are.”

“You touch that dial and I’m putting nothing on but country music,” Riley snarked, a disembodied voice emerging from the El Camino’s speakers.

“Don’t even joke!” Ellie laughed.

“All my exes live in Texas,” Riley began to sing in a warbling, off key drawl. They had both heard that song coming from the guard shack at the school on more than one occasion. WBQZ, the best and only radio station in Boston, played a block of country music every day. “And Texas is the place I’d dearly love to be.”

“Oh God!” Ellie wailed, giggling. “My ears! Make it stop!”

“But all my exes live in Texas,” Riley sang from inside the dashboard radio. “And that’s why I hang my hat in Tennesseeeeeeeee!!”

“Ahhh! Blood’s gonna start shooting outta my ears! Knock it off!”

Riley laughed. A rippling spray of static mixed in with the sound. Ellie hoped she wasn’t driving out of range of wherever it was that Riley was broadcasting from.

“Coming up next,” Riley said in her best radio announcer voice, “Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand by Your Man’.”

“Oh God, please make it stop,” Ellie moaned pitifully. “When did you start enjoying country music, Riley?”

“Maybe you’re not the only one who’s changed, Boo.”

“Yeah, well, unlike you, I’ve clearly changed for the better. I’m tougher now. And I’m not afraid of stuff like I used to be. And I still like _good_ music.”

“Is that why you’ve started kissing boys too? ‘Cause you’re not afraid of them anymore?” Riley snickered as Ellie rolled her eyes.

“I was never afraid of boys,” Ellie said. “I just didn’t like them. Still kinda don’t, to be honest. I’ve just made an exception for one particular boy, that’s all.”

“Two of them,” Riley mocked. “Don’t forget about his brother.”

“Who? Tommy? I don’t think of Tommy like that!”

“You think he’s cute!”

“That’s only because he kind of looks like Joel.”

“He’s blonde,” Riley said dryly.

Ellie shrugged, and smiled mysteriously. “A younger, blonder Joel,” she said, as though that explained everything. “It’s not my fault they’re practically twins or whatever. I’m not into him, you nosey douche canoe.”

“You were checking out his butt when he was talking to Joel back at that dam.”

“That’s because he’s got the same butt as Joel! They’re brothers! It was like double the butt, Riley! I was overwhelmed! Don’t judge me! I was surrounded by cute butts. You woulda done the same thing!”

“Shit, girl. I would’ve flashed my boobs at them and then taken them both to bed!”

“Tommy’s married!”

“Maria could watch! I wouldn’t mind.”

“Riley!” Ellie gasped, her mouth open, her face delighted. “You are such a perv!”

“You’d do the same thing, Miss All-Grown-Up and wearing the big bra now.”

“I would not!”

“You thought about it! That night after you and Joel rode away from Jackson instead of spending the night in town like sensible people! You wondered about what it would be like to kiss Tommy. You wondered if he kisses the same way Joel does.”

Ellie squirmed in her seat. Now that she no longer had a body, the stereophonic ghost of Riley could see inside her head. It wasn’t fair.

“It’s not like that,” Ellie grumbled. “That was just… you know… a _fantasy_. That’s all. Don’t make such a big deal about it.”

“Uh huh.” Riley did not sound convinced.

“And it was just that one time,” Ellie insisted, which was the truth. Mostly. “It’s not like I’m a dirty freak like you. I don’t want both of them. Just Joel.”

“Tell the truth,” Riley needled in a sing-song voice.

“That is the truth!” Ellie said.

“Tell me,” Riley teased.

“Look… It’s… I mean… It’s _complicated_ , all right?” Ellie whined.

“Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman,” Riley sang, her voice a close approximation to the sound of a hillbilly cat being strangled by a banjo. “Givin’ all your love to just one maaaaannnnnn!”

Ellie laughed. “Okay! No more! I can’t take it! I’ll talk!”

“Admit it, Boo! Tell me the truth or else it’s nothing but pickin’ and grinnin’ and wall-to-wall songs about rebel flags and gravel roads and hound dogs with cheatin’ hearts for the rest of this trip.”

“Fine!” Ellie grumped, slouching in defeat. “I thought about _it_ … about _them_ … but only a couple of times. I swear. And it’s only because Tommy looks so much like Joel. And I swiped this picture of Joel that was taken when he was really young… and he just looks so damn hot, Riley.”

“You want the be in the middle of a Miller Men sandwich, don’cha?”

“What?!” Ellie spluttered. “No way! I admit that I was thinking about Tommy, sure. But, you know, _separately_! Not… both of them… not _both_ guys… at the same time…” Her voice trailed off, her head suddenly filled with new possibilities.

“Ooh! There it is,” Riley said smugly. “Two big Millers and one little Ellie, all tangled up together!”

“Shush! You’re making it sound all… y’know… weird and stuff!”

“It is weird! You are such a little _freak_ , Boo!” Riley cackled with delight.

“I wasn’t thinking about it! Not _that_ way! Not until you just put this idea in my head, you big pervert! I swear! You’re worse than Cherry Jackson! She probably did two guys at the same time!”

“If she didn’t, I bet she wanted to! Hell, I want to too, now that you’ve got me thinking about it, girl.” Riley laughed heartily, her master plan coming to fruition. “Pretty hot, being one woman with two men paying attention to you at once. Sexy, huh? Don’t deny it!”

“Yeahhhh,” Ellie said quietly, still lost in thought and a little embarrassed about the places her mind was taking her. “It kind of is.”

“So… Now that we’re being all truthful and shit… Do you love him?”

“Riley…”

“Do you love him? It’s okay. You can tell me, Ellie.”

“I…”

“You love him, Boo. And that’s okay.”

“Really? I mean… I do. But are you… y’know… cool with that?”

“Sure,” Riley said, with an almost audible shrug of her unseen shoulders. “Why wouldn’t I be cool with it? I’m dead. I’m pretty much cool with everything now.”

“Don’t say that,” Ellie muttered, clearly uncomfortable.

“I am,” Riley admitted. “I’m dead. I’m a voice on the radio, for fuck’s sake, girl.”

“Stop saying that!” Ellie begged.

“Nothing’s gonna change what happened, Boo.”

“No! Don’t say that!”

“I don’t blame you,” Riley said gently. “For what happened up on that roof. I don’t blame you one bit. I want you to know that, Ellie.”

“No! Don’t! It will all be alright when we get where we’re going. They’ll know what to do. They’ll know how to fix everything. We can be together again. I just have to get us there!”

“And where is that, Boo? Where are we going?”

“I… I don’t know,” Ellie shouted. “I don’t have a fucking map, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? Well there it is, Riley. I don’t have a map and I all I can do is the best I can do, okay?”

“Not a good plan, Ellie.”

“Yeah? Well what else can I do? I’m fucking out here all alone and I’m lost, okay? I’m lost, Riley! Is that what you want to hear? I’m lost and I’m scared and nobody ever taught me how to do a goddamn thing and now everybody is expecting me to just figure out all the stupid little details on my own! And so here I am! I’m trying to do the right thing even though I know that nothing I ever did was good enough! Not for you! Not for Joel! Not for anybody! But I’m _trying_ , okay? I’m trying as hard as I fucking can! Why the fuck isn’t that good enough for anybody? Why am I never fucking good enough?!”

“You’re right. That’s not good enough, Boo.”

“Shut up!” Ellie barked and smashed her open hand against the radio controls. Dials spun. Preset knobs clicked in and out of place. “SHUT UP!”

The road rolled by in silence for a while.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Ellie whispered to the whistling wind. “I don’t know what else to do so I’m just going in this direction and maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll turn out to be the right one, okay? All right?”

The wind didn’t answer.

She reached over, flipped the radio on. Static filled the cab of the El Camino.

“Riley?”

She turned the dial, slowly and carefully at first, then frantically as no station emerged from the white noise.

“Riley! I’m sorry! Okay? Please don’t be mad! _I’m sorry!_ ”

She pushed buttons, each one several times, desperate, trying to find her friend again. But Riley was gone, swallowed up by the dull, hissing roar.

“Guess this tape is blank,” Ellie mumbled.

“What?” Joel said from somewhere down the hallway of the old, two-story house.

“I’m trying out this cassette tape I just found,” Ellie replied loudly, pulling the earbuds out and coiling them around her Walkman tightly. “But I think it’s blank. There’s no music. Just the hissy sound of blank tape.”

Joel’s boots echoed in the empty hallway as he made his way towards her and the old bedroom she was searching.

“Thought you said the batteries were dead?” he said from the other side of the doorway, still out of sight.

“They were. But I found some new ones in the last house. In a kitchen drawer,” she said, smiling when he rounded the corner, happy to see him again. “And now that I’ve finally got a new blank tape, maybe I can find some music to put on here.”

Joel nodded. “Make sure it’s good music this time.”

She smirked and gave him the finger.

“All my exes live in Texas,” she warbled, deliberately off tune, and grinned when she saw his face light up.

“Holy shit, girl,” he beamed, pleased and surprised. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

She walked over to him, almost strutting, appearing sexier to him than she realized. She reached out and gently placed the cassette in his shirt pocket. She tapped it with her finger.

“If we ever find a tape recorder, dude, you’re gonna fill this tape up with your singing.”

He laughed.

They all laughed.

Everyone on the street turned to look and jeer at the naked girl. She was just fourteen and not as filled out as she’d like to be. She was scrawny and short and deeply ashamed in a way that made every inch of her skin burn. The Boston sky was clear and the sun was going to make the redness of her shame permanent if she didn’t get indoors soon. But the man leading her down the street was in no hurry. He didn’t have to be. He was big and strong and obviously respected by the people they were passing. And he was wearing clothes, unlike the poor girl following along behind him, her wrists held out in front of her belly, bound by coarse rope. He held the end of the rope like a leash. She was his pet, for all practical purposes.

“Look!” whispered someone in the long line of faceless men, “you can see her pussy! Not one hair on it!”

Marlene had made her shave it just before he’d arrived to buy her. She had said it would drive up the price, sweeten the deal. Men liked to look at pussys, that’s what Marlene had said, and so the hair had to go. Marlene had wanted this man to be able to see everything. All these men could see it now.

Ellie lowered her hands, trying to cover it as she walked. She wanted to hide her breasts as well, but her wrists were bound together. She could only hide one place. She made her choice. The man tugged on the rope, pulling her hands away, forcing her show it to everyone they passed. She tried to look away, head down, cheeks burning. She tried not to hear the men whistling and laughing. She tried not to cry, but her cheeks became wet. She was wet in another place as well. She didn’t want to be. She couldn’t help it. Her naked, hairless snatch was on display for all of Boston to see, and it throbbed and glistened, basking in the attention it was receiving.

The cracked concrete was rough and unpleasant underneath her bare feet. She grimaced, keeping her eyes carefully fixed on the ground. She could hear the people laughing and making jokes at her expense, but so long as she stared at the sidewalk, she wouldn’t have to see them mocking her.

“Almost there, girl” he said to her, nodding in greeting to another man they passed on the sidewalk.

“Good,” she whispered.

“Didn’t give you permission to talk,” he warned.

Obediently, she kept silent. He led her down the street, around the corner, across a small parking lot, and into an old apartment building. The harsh sunlight could not get to her exposed skin in here, but the leering eyes of strange men easily found her from the shadows of the hallways and from open doors. A few of the men called out to her new owner, hoping he might share her with them later. They said they would be happy to pay him. She shivered, sick to her stomach at the thought. She belonged to him now. She would have to do whatever he wanted, even stuff like that.

He produced a set of keys from his pocket and opened a door at the farthest end of the hallway. He led her inside and closed the door. She was away from the lecherous stares of the other men, but she was alone with him now. Fear of a different sort gripped her.

“This is where I’m gonna be keepin’ you for a while, Nellie,” he said.

“Ellie.” Her voice was very quiet. Meek.

When his open palm struck her face, it was not gentle.

“Your name is whatever I say it is. Got it?”

“Yessir,” she peeped.

He struck her again, harder that time. She gasped and staggered from it.

“Don’t talk. Understand? I didn’t bring you up here to listen to you yap. You shut your mouth and you keep it shut, yeah?”

She nodded. Tears ran in streams down her cheeks. Her body trembled. She was very scared. Her throbbing pussy, which had been tingling since Marlene had made her take off all her clothes so this man could inspect her before agreeing to buy her, began to pound, hammering in time with her aching cheek.

“Good girl.”

She couldn’t hide how excited she was. The hard pink points of her swollen tits gave it away. Soon he’d see the trail of wetness dribbling down her thigh. She could feel it leaking out. She was already wet before, when he took her through the crowd. But once he’d slapped her, she had begun to burn with lust. Her boiling cunt was overflowing. She hated how much she enjoyed this. She hated this man. She hated Marlene for selling her. She hated the officer who threw her out of school. She hated Riley and her stupid boyfriend for not taking her in, forcing her to seek out Marlene’s help. But Marlene had never wanted her. No one had ever wanted her. It was only a matter of time before she ended up for sale like this. This was her last chance. She had to please this man, no matter what. She had nowhere else to go now.

“You’re gonna keep this place clean for me, yeah?” he said. He didn’t ask. This wasn’t a choice she got to make.

She nodded, still afraid to look at him. If she looked, he would see her eyes. He would see how desperately needy she was. He would see how much she enjoyed being abused. Being abused meant somebody was paying attention to her, and that was what she wanted, however she could get it. And once he figured that out about her, she’d be lost. Lost to her need and her lust and her betraying body that craved discipline. She wanted to surrender to his cruelty. She wanted to be owned. Forever.

He cut the rope from her wrists with a switchblade. The knife had been hers, but Marlene had given it to this man, made it part of the deal, almost as an afterthought. She wanted the knife back, but it wasn’t hers anymore. It didn’t belong to her. She didn’t belong to herself. Not any more.

“I’m gonna show you what to do, Shelly.”

She nodded and accepted the new name. This was a test. She was sure of it. She would be whoever he wanted her to be.

He smiled. She had passed the test.

“I expect a clean house, Freckle Tits, so you’d better do a good job or else I’m gonna dump your little ass over the wall with the garbage and the clickers.”

She nodded. She could feel the slickness on the inside of her thighs, where the delicate skin touched. The wetness leaking from her cunt caught the light of the sun streaming in from the window. She tried to press her legs together discretely, hiding it from him. It didn’t work.

“You drip any of that on floor and I’m gonna make you lick it up,” he sneered.

She nodded. It was all she could do. Her pussy continued to betray her, drop by hateful drop.

“Better get you off the carpet and onto some tile,” he growled. “You got chores to do.”

She frowned, disappointed. She didn’t want to be a maid. She wanted to be a fucktoy. Why wouldn’t he fuck her? Wasn’t she pretty enough? He took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen. Brooms and dustpans and mops and buckets were there, scattered around the room and across the countertop. Tools of every sort.

He held up one of the hand tools that they had taken from their second trip to the gardening shop a few days before. It looked like a miniature shovel. He’d called it a hand trowel when he’d first found it. “I think this is a good mornin’ to teach you how to make an Indian fire pit.”

“Fire?” she asked. “Thought you said that from now on we should only make a fire at sundown, so nobody would have time to follow the smoke and find us before it got dark.”

“Smart girl,” he nodded, tucking an old copy of _USA Today_ under his arm as he left the office and trotted down the stairs. “I did say that. But the kind of fire I’m gonna teach you how to make doesn’t smoke.”

Smiling, he stepped outside and crunched off into the snow, with her following close. It was a clear, bright day, the first they’d had since they arrived at this town. Winter was nowhere close to being over, but on a day like this, it was easy to pretend. On a playful whim, she tried to place her feet exactly in his footsteps. It wasn’t easy. His stride was longer than hers. Unexpectedly, he led her past the remains of yesterday’s campfire and kept going, across the road, all the way to the fancy, neighboring house, the one with the big boat parked in the backyard, rotting away on a rusting trailer.

_Why would someone who lives in the mountains own a boat?_

“Grab those sticks, will ya?” he asked, indicating a few dry, broken branches lying in the road. He nodded approvingly as she dutifully scooped them up without breaking stride.

Behind the big house, there was a long patio. A thin steel awning stretched over it, rusting and pockmarked with several tiny, corroded holes. The last few feet of the awning, near the end of the house, provided shade to dirt rather than the concrete of the patio. There had been a flowerbed here once, walled in with small, decorative rocks

“We’re gonna dig right here,” he said, pointing to a spot of ground close to the corner of the brick wall, while still being under the protective edge of the awning. “Breeze comes blowin’ in this way. Exactly what we’re lookin’ for.”

“Why here?” she asked. “Why not over there by the place we’re staying in?”

“This awning will keep a lot of the snow out, and it’ll catch any little bits of smoke and disperse it some. And a fire pit like this one needs a steady stream of wind if it’s gonna work right.”

He dropped to his knees and began to clear the weeds and snow away. She joined him in the effort.

“We’re gonna clear out a spot over there too,” he said, pointing to a spot just outside the flowerbed, a few inches behind her, beyond the edge of the house. He worked the trowel into the stubborn, frozen soil, chiseling out the dirt and plant roots. With no small amount of effort, he dug a hole about a foot across and more or less as deep. “You gotta get all the roots and stuff out. Green wood burns smoky. And don’t ever dig one in muddy ground or else water’ll seep in and put the fire out.”

“All right,” she nodded, taking mental notes, filing it all away into the voluminous pages of ‘The Ellie Williams Official Survival Guide and Pun Book’ – it was a work in progress and sure to be a best seller one day. “So you put the fire down there? And it doesn’t smoke? How does that work?”

“You’ll see. We ain’t done yet. Next we gotta make the chimney hole.” He moved around behind her and tapped the point of the hand trowel against the other spot they’d cleared earlier. “This hole’s gonna be half the size of that one, and it’s gotta be about a foot away from it. You dig it out at an angle, so that it connects to the bottom of the first hole. Watch.”

He began to chisel at the frozen earth. Soon a hole roughly the size of his fist began to take shape, worming down diagonally, until the tip of the trowel appeared inside the bottom of the bigger hole.

“Neat,” she said.

He showed her with his hands how the thing worked. “See? The wind blows this way, over the holes, so it’ll get pulled down into the chimney here. That’ll make the firewood at the bottom of the big hole burn really hot, so our food and water heat up faster. It burns hotter than a normal campfire so it uses all the wood up and barely smokes at all. And no one passing by on that road down there would be able to see the light from the fire because it’s down inside the hole, yeah?”

“Pretty cool, Joel.” She grinned, feeling like a spy operating behind enemy lines.

“It’s not much good to warm up by, since all the heat stays right there at the opening, but you can take a rack off a backyard griller, set it over the hole, and cook really fast without havin’ to scrounge up a lot of firewood. The little hole sorta focuses the heat. Lot less work involved.”

“I like the sound of that.” She shivered and blew warm air onto her fingers. It was cold this morning and she had pulled off her poofy ski gloves so she that could work with her hands, just like he had. Doing what he does was usually the smart thing to do.

“We just have to get some kindlin’ lit, then we toss it in the hole and add some wood. That’s all there is too it.”

“Wish we could find some more dryer lint,” she sighed. “I used all ours up back when you were hurt. I looked around in the other houses, but I never could find any more of it.”

“That’s all right. We had it when we needed it. That’s what matters. Besides, if we can find the right kind of tin can, I’ll teach you how to make char cloth. That stuff’s even better than dryer lint on a damp day.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And the next rabbit we get, I’m gonna show you how to make bone broth. Real healthy stuff. That’ll help us get through this winter in pretty good shape.”

“ _Bone_ broth?” she asked, disbelieving, uncertain if this was either a joke he was telling or maybe a creepy ghost story in the making.

“Bone broth. It’s the kind of stuff that’ll keep you going for a long time. Grandma taught me how to make it. She told me that it’s what you make when there’s nothing else in the pantry to make.”

“Your grandmother taught you to cook? Neat.”

“She taught me to cook a few things,” Joel said. “This one summer when dad wasn’t around anymore and mom was… off doing other things… I was just starting out. Bills were stackin’ up and…” He sighed, and for a moment, he stopped shredding the old newspaper into strips of tinder.

“And then what?” she asked gently, trying to prod without being too obvious about it.

“It’s best if you cook the bones first,” Joel said, leaving the past in the past. “Roast ‘em a little. That really brings out the flavor. Then you simmer ‘em in water for at least a full day and night. That’ll get all the good, healthy stuff out of ‘em and make for a better broth. Hearty stuff. You’ll be surprised by how much it’ll fill you up.”

“Sounds good,” she said, wishing he had finished his story.

“Sarah…” he began, slightly choking on the softly spoken word. He took a deep breath before continuing, “… Sarah loved it. Even when she got older, she always got a big grin on her face whenever I made it. Sometimes plain, sometimes as part of a beef or vegetable stew. She always loved it. I guess she got a taste for it because I made it so much when she was little and we were so damn poor all the time.”

Ellie’s eyes grew wet and hot at the corners. She smiled and nodded sincerely. “I’m sure I’ll love it, Joel. It sounds delicious.”

“It is,” he nodded, not making eye contact, and took out his lighter to ignite the wad of tinder before stuffing it down into the fire hole. “Get started on the firewood, alright?”

Ellie began to break apart the dry, brittle sticks she had gathered.

The old wood split and cracked easily. The wooden gate fell onto the snow, ripped free from its hinges by a single blow from Joel’s boot. The large fairground behind the Dumont Outdoorsman’s Lodge was open to them now. There were rifle ranges, obstacle courses, artificial rock climbing walls, and a tall wooden tower that had once boasted a zip line.

“What the heck?” Ellie said, looking around as she followed him through the gate. “What is all this stuff?”

“Place where people used to come to have fun.”

“Do you think they have go-karts here?” she asked. She and Joel had found some of the funny little kid-sized cars before, at a park of some kind, in Illinois maybe, or Indiana, one of those states they had passed through on their way to Wyoming, but none of the go-karts had worked, of course. Almost nothing worked anymore.

“Maybe. Seems like they’ve got everything else.”

“Hope they’ve got some gas for the snowmobile. That tank’s almost empty. We need ammo too, dude.”

“Yeah. We’re scrapin’ bottom on lots of stuff. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a good haul today,” he said.

“That’d be cool,” Ellie said, trying to sound like the old Ellie, the one who had always hoped for the best. “Is it okay if I look around a little? I’ve never seen anything like this place.”

“Sure,” he said, and waited for the question she always asked whenever they went anywhere interesting and new. After a moment spent discretely watching her walk around, examining the archery targets and rappelling walls, he realized that she wasn’t going to ask him. It wasn’t like her. It made him sad to see her so out of sorts.

“Y’know, I never spent any time at places like this,” he volunteered.

“Really?” she asked, swiveling her head around to look at him. “I would’ve figured you to be the outdoorsy type, dude.”

“I am,” he winked. “But I was always into the real outdoors stuff. Not this fenced in, fake stuff.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” She nodded, understanding, or pretending to. “This stuff is kind of weird when you think about it, huh? Why climb a fake rock wall when there are mountains just right over there.”

He started to nod, but slipped on the patch of ice hiding beneath the snow. “Shit!” He steadied himself and managed to stay on his feet.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Watch your step,” Joel called from up ahead, splashing through the creek, his boots sliding around on the mossy green stones beneath the water. “These rocks are pretty slippery.”

“We will,” Tess answered, shooting a glance back at Ellie, making sure the wide-eyed girl hadn’t wandered off.

The dark, flooded subway tunnels of Boston were behind them. A warm summer sky was slowly coming to an end overhead. The sky was reddening along the edge of the horizon. The moon hung against a backdrop of indigo. Birds sang in the tree. Butterflies flittered about, from leaf to leaf. There were flickering lights suspended in the air.

“Cool. Fireflies,” she cooed, sweetly astonished. “Look.”

“I can’t see them from in here,” Riley said. “Duh!”

“Shh!” Ellie whispered. “They’ll hear you.”

“What’d you say?” Tess asked, halting her stride for a few moments to let the straggling teenage girl catch up.

“Nothing,” Ellie said. With the older woman looking right at her, she couldn’t even give Riley a good, satisfying ‘I told you so’ glare. “Talking to myself, I guess. I’ve never been in the woods before. It’s kind of amazing.”

“Yeah. I love it outside. Clean air, fresh water. Maybe later we can send Joel off on an errand and you and me can wash up in one of these creeks. No water rationing out here,” Tess added with a confidential grin, pretending to share a big secret with the girl. “You can take as long as you like and nobody will shut off the water.”

“Sweet,” Ellie said. “Do they have hot water creeks?”

“‘Fraid not,” Tess shrugged with a ‘what can you do’ grin. “Nothing’s perfect, right?”

Ellie nodded. The idea of having more than a few minutes to rush her way through a lukewarm shower with water pressure so low that it struggled to do more than dribble from the showerhead was appealing to her. Hot water would have been nice, but she had never bathed in hot water in her life. You can’t miss what you’ve never had. And besides, Tess was pretty and nice. The idea of taking a bath with the older woman in one of these creeks kindled a pleasant feeling of warmth inside her that would make up for a lack of hot water. Tess was very pretty. Ellie wouldn’t mind seeing her naked, that was for sure. She told herself she wouldn’t stare. Boys stared. They stared and tried to imagine what you looked like with your clothes off. They drilled holes in the walls of the shower so they didn’t have to imagine. Ellie wouldn’t stare. She just liked the idea of being naked with Tess. Naked and clean and in the woods. Maybe they could just run around naked for a while, under the warm rays of the sun.

“Why is it getting hot in here?” Riley whispered. Only Ellie could hear her voice. “What are you doing out there?”

“C’mon,” Tess said, motioning Ellie forward with her hand. “He’s not going to wait for us.”

“Ugh. He’s kind of a jerk,” Ellie said, hoping she wasn’t overstepping her bounds.

Tess chuckled. “Yeah, he is. But he’s my jerk, you know?”

“I guess,” Ellie said, carefully noncommittal. “I don’t really ‘get’ guys, you know? They’re so… weird.”

“Nah,” Tess replied in a jaded, breezy way. “Guys are actually pretty simple, Ellie.”

Ellie smiled suspiciously, playing along. “Yeah? If you say so.”

Tess slipped an arm around Ellie as they walked, her strong, small hand at the base of the girl’s neck. With each step they took, the teenager’s auburn ponytail swung back and forth, brushing the woman’s knuckles.

“Let me show you what I’m talking about. That guy up there,” Tess said, pointing towards Joel, who was scouting ahead while skillfully remaining in sight of his partner. “What do you think of him? Besides him being a jerk, what else do you think of him?”

“Umm… he’s grumpy… kind of old… doesn’t say much. Walks too fast. He doesn’t like me, I know that.”

“He likes you. He just doesn’t show it.”

“If you say so. I wouldn’t want to work with him all the time the way you do.”

“It’s got it perks. He knows how to fight. He carries all the heavy stuff. And the sex is good. That smoothes over a lot of the bumps, that’s for sure.”

Ellie giggled at how refreshingly matter of fact Tess was about stuff like that.

“Sex scares me,” the girl admitted, sharing a secret with a woman she hoped would become her mentor. “Guys scare me.”

“You ever had sex?” Tess asked quietly, though there was no chance their voices would carry all the way to the man’s ears. Her tone was friendly. She wasn’t laying a trap for Ellie. No teasing or jokes were hidden behind the woman’s question.

“No,” the girl divulged in hushed, shy tones. “Not with a guy, anyway.”

“Sure. Give away all our secrets,” Riley muttered. “Tell her where I hid the beer, why doncha?” Tess didn’t seem to hear the complaint.

“Oh yeah? You have a girlfriend?” Tess asked, happy to swap secrets. This was girl talk, after all.

“Yeah. We… you know… fooled around and stuff,” Ellie answered.

Riley spluttered, feigning offense. “Fooled around? Girl, you ate my pussy like it was chocolate mousse! I had to pry your mouth off it!” Neither of them had ever had a fancy dessert like that, but they’d seen pictures and it looked _amazing_.

“Hey, alright,” Tess replied in a warm, genial voice. She hugged the girl to her side quickly, affectionately. “Good for you.”

“Thanks,” Ellie answered, feeling giddy and goofy at the same time. More importantly, she felt accepted. This was a woman’s club now, and she was in it. “Fooling around is really fun.”

“It sure is. Want to fool around later?” Tess teased, grinning.

Ellie burst into embarrassed laughter, peeling away from Tess, blushing, guffawing.

Riley admonished her to get control of herself. “Put a cork in that shit, Boo!” she hissed. “You’re making a fool of yourself! Didn’t I teach you anything?”

Tess cackled. The girl, already very likeable, was positively charming now.

“You ladies doin’ alright back there?” Joel asked from the other side of the creek, up the small hill, amid the thickening line of trees that mark the edge of the forest. His voice was deep, firm, and resolved. Loud, as the distance between them requires, but not quite a bellow. It made Ellie uncomfortable. It was too forceful. He needed to be nicer.

“Just talking about you, Tex,” Tess responded, one hand cupped alongside her mouth to help her higher, better voice carry to him. “Telling her all sorts of stories about you.”

“Figured that’s what that was,” he muttered and Ellie wondered how it was possible she had heard him from all the way over there.

“Keep scouting ahead,” Tess told him. “We’ll catch up.”

Joel sighed and made his way into the forest as ordered.

“Wow. He does what you say.”

“Damn right, he does. He works for me,” Tess answered with a smug little grin. They were almost to the creek. They weren’t walking fast now. The pace was slower, more conducive to intimacy.

Helmsman, set engines to ‘conversation speed’, Ellie thought to herself.

“God, you are such a dork,” Riley lamented. She wanted Ellie to be cool so this woman would fool around with the redhead later and Riley could listen to it. But Ellie didn’t know how to be cool and Riley couldn’t show her anymore.

“Do you beat him up if he doesn’t follow orders?” Ellie teased, ignoring Riley. She knew she was a dork, but she had to muddle through life on her own now.

“I do worse than that,” Tess quipped. “I cut him off for a while.”

“Cut him off?” Ellie asked, trying to puzzle it out. “You mean… like, his wiener?”

“Oh, God no!” Tess laughed. “Though I swear he gets me mad enough sometimes to think about it… No, I mean I cut him off from me. From sex. Get it?”

“Oh!” Ellie exclaimed, suddenly figuring it out. Riley was right. She was tragically dorky. “Okay. I see. Sorry. I’m sorta slow on the uptake when it comes to stuff like that.”

“That’s alright, sweetie,” Tess said, and took Ellie’s hand as they picked their way carefully across the babbling creek. “Careful. Don’t slip.”

Ellie shook as much of the water from her shoes as she could. It was going to be a long, squishy walk to camp. Tess didn’t let go of her hand. They weaved their fingers together. Ellie smiled at her. Tess smiled back.

“And does that usually work?” the girl asked. “Not letting him hump you and stuff?”

“Sure does,” Tess grinned slyly. “But I don’t do it unless I absolutely have to.”

“He gets too grumpy if you do?”

“ _I_ get too grumpy,” Tess snickered, giving Ellie’s hand a quick squeeze. “I miss the sex almost as much as he does. But I can stand going without it just a _little_ longer than he can, so I usually win.”

Ellie tittered. This was grown up stuff Tess was sharing with her nad it made her cheeks flush red to talk about it.

“It’s that good, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Tess sighed happily, their arms swinging together as they strolled along, carefree. “It can be very good. Sometimes, ehh, it’s just okay. But other times? … Oh, Ellie. My goodness. It will put you in a mood so good that even the asshole you wake up next to in the morning can’t ruin your day.”

Ellie giggled. There were so many grown up truths being revealed to her today.

“When we get to camp,” Tess said, pushing a low-hanging branch aside for them to duck under as they entered the woods, hand in hand, “Joel and I are probably going to do the kind of stuff you and me are talking about. Just to let you know in advance.”

“Oh, okay,” Ellie nodded, acting as cool and casual as she could. “I’ll go find someplace else to be for a while. Don’t worry.”

“No, I meant you can watch,” Tess answered, her voice carefully low. Joel was in these woods, somewhere up ahead. He didn’t need to know about this stuff. Girl talk was not for boy ears. “If you _want_ to, you know?”

Ellie sputtered. She was not prepared to be this casual. “S-seriously? Really?”

“Do you want to? You might learn something,” The older woman’s face was devious, energetic. Her voice was enticing to the young girl.

“Getting strangely warm in here again,” Riley giggled.

“Um… sure…” Ellie answered in halting, unsure tones. Is this a trap? Is this a prank or something? “I… uhh… I’ve never seen… you know… _it_. Being done, I mean.”

“I’ll make sure he keeps it simple for you. Nothing too kinky, I promise,” Tess giggled in Ellie’s ear. The words were warm against the girl’s skin, yet the sensation made her shiver. Tess could feel it. She smiled. She remembered being a girl. She felt Ellie grip her hand tightly, like she was a life preserver for the kid.

“Is _he_ going to be okay with this?” Ellie asked.

“I guarantee it. Hell, knowing a pretty girl like you is watching will probably turn him on a lot.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I betcha he’ll show off for you. Break out his best moves. The really good kind that give him a sore back the next day.”

Ellie snickered. She didn’t even care that her shoes and socks were all wet and gross. Her mind was suddenly on other things. Boys were scary, no matter what Riley said. And they wanted to do things to girls that seemed gross and weird and slimy and it was all they seemed to think about and the only thing they talked about. Ellie preferred girls. Girls were easier to understand. But a few boys seemed almost interesting at times, one boy in particular. She couldn’t remember who he was, but she could feel him in her mind somewhere, but the place where he resided was fuzzy around the edges, and he wasn’t there anymore but she wanted him to come back. She wanted his kisses and his hands but she was scared of them and she didn’t know why. It wasn’t anything he had done, she was sure, or she wanted to be, but if she couldn’t remember why she was scared or why he had gone, then how could she be sure of anything?

“I’m… I mean, I can just watch, right? I don’t have to… you know… do stuff, right?”

She hadn’t meant to ask that question. It was supposed to stay bottled up inside her head, tossed into the enormous pile of bottles filled with notes that she never worked up the nerve to cast out into the ocean outside herself. Maybe Riley was using her voice when she wasn’t looking. Riley did that sometimes. She swore to Ellie there were no gears and levers in there, where Ellie kept her now, but Ellie was starting to suspect otherwise.

“Of course not,” Tess said, her hand slipping free of Ellie’s fingers, coming to rest firm and reassuring on Ellie’s shoulder. “You just watch, and me and him’ll put on a good show for you… and maybe, after he’s asleep… the two of us can spend some time together.”

“‘Talk time’? Or ‘fool around time’?” Ellie asked shyly, green eyes peering up from behind long auburn lashes; her face said that she was clearly hoping for one answer over the other.

“Whichever one you want,” the woman responded in just the right tone.

Ellie smiled. Girls were better. They understood each other. Boys didn’t get it. They peeped in through little holes in the shower walls and their eyes left little footprints all over your body. But tonight it was going to be the other way around. Ellie’s eyes were going to be all over that man. She would get to judge him. She was going to see if there was anything he had that could hold her interest. She was skeptical.

“No you’re not,” Riley chided, hiding where Tess couldn’t see her. “You can’t stop thinking about his junk. I know. I’m in here with all these pictures floating around. There’s dicks _everywhere_ , Boo! The place is filling up with them all of a sudden!

Ellie giggled. Tess was looking at her, curious. The woman couldn’t know about Riley. No one could. No one would understand what Ellie had done for her friend. No one. She had to say something and she grasped onto the first thought that passed her way.

“So… when you said ‘kinky’… what kind of stuff are we talking about?”

Tess giggled again. “Straight on into the advanced stuff, I see.”

Ellie shrugged her shoulders a little defensively. “Well, I’m curious. That’s all.”

“Lemme see… where to start… there’s spankings, of course,” Tess offered. “I’m always up for a good spanking. I tend to misbehave, you know.”

Ellie snickered and blushed. “Me too.”

“Sometimes I let him tie me up,” Tess admitted.

“Oh wow. Isn’t that scary?”

“A little. But that’s what makes it fun. And I trust him,” Tess told her. “And I like it. Hell, it’s my idea most of the time.”

“Really? I’d be scared. What if he did something bad? What if he got carried away?”

“He wouldn’t. He knows not to go too far with it.”

“And… um… how far is far enough?”

“Depends on where I’m at in my head,” Tess shrugged. “It’s complicated. Sometimes, just being tied up is enough. Other times, I need more. Rougher, y’know. Sometimes, I… well, I need it _really_ rough. I ask him to choke me. Or smack my face. I don’t think he likes that part very much. But he’ll do it for me, if I ask.”

“Holy cow. That sounds intense,” Ellie whispered, shocked. She would have been speechless except sometimes she wanted the same thing. She had wanted that kind of stuff ever since she’d found that book in the bookmobile, the one about the lady lawyer and her two boyfriends. There were several really good sex scenes in that book, each one more smutty and kinky than the last. She read it all the time around the campfire.

“You haven’t found that book yet,” Riley said in her best, spooky ghost voice.

Shh, Ellie thought, I’m ignoring you.

“Do you… um… ever let him cum on your face?” Ellie’s voice was quiet. This was conspiratorial stuff, for girl’s only, and absolutely not for boy’s ears. Boys didn’t need to know that girls secretly talked about this kind of stuff. It would only encourage them.

“Sure,” Tess snickered. “When he’s titfucking me, it’s not like I can stop him. I’m tied up, kid. All I can do is try to get him to shoot it in my mouth and not my eye.”

Just like the book, Ellie thought to herself. The one I’m going to find in a few weeks!

“Behold! It is a vision!” Riley proclaimed, doing her best to sound like a gypsy fortuneteller peering into the mists of her crystal ball. Ellie could almost see the turban on her friend’s head. “A Vision Of… _THE FUTURE!_ ”

“And you… you _like_ that sort of stuff?”

“At the time, yeah. Sometimes more than other times. Other times you just do stuff because it’ll make the other person happy, and then you kind of get into it anyway.”

“You want him to do that to _you_ , Boo,” Riley purred knowingly. “And not because it would make _him_ happy. You used to think about it all the time. You used to dream about it. Before he got hurt and everything went all shitty.”

I’m dreaming right now, Ellie realized glumly. I’m dreaming. You’re not really in there, Riley. And Tess is dead too. You both died in Boston.

“You don’t know for sure I’m not in here,” Riley snarked. “You can’t prove it. I know all your thoughts. I’ll prove it! Quick, think of a number between one and ten…”

Shh, Riley, Ellie thought. This is serious.

“Twelve!” Riley whooped, triumphant. “And that’s cheating by the way!”

Tess saw the melancholy expression creep across the face of the girl walking beside her. She took Ellie’s hand and tried to cheer her up again. Tess didn’t know she was dead. She didn’t know this was a dream. She wanted to make the girl smile. The girl reminded her of herself when she was younger, or so Joel would tell the girl one day soon, weeks from now, halfway across the country, in a little town called Arlington, just off Interstate 80. Tess didn’t know about that. She couldn’t. It hadn’t happened yet, not at this point in the trip. It happened after Tess had died.

“It’s like that between men and woman, Ellie. You’ll see what I mean later.” Tess gave a devilish smile. “It’ll make sense when I’m on all fours the way he likes and then I ask him to slap my ass. We’ll each get what we want. You’ll see.”

Ellie grinned back. This was a great dream. She decided to make the most of it. Too many of her dreams lately were awful and she usually woke up sad or scared or worse, feeling like she’d been raped or eaten, or really worse, raped while being eaten. This was a safe, smutty dream. It would be a nice change of pace. She squeezed the woman’s hand and Tess squeezed back. Ellie smiled. Tess was strong and full of life again, and she was fearless and friendly, and she had those great boobs that Ellie would give anything to have. Ellie couldn’t wait to see more of those boobs in a little bit. When they got to the campsite, Joel would already have everything set up. He might even be naked, just to save more time. Dreams were great in that way. All the boring stuff got cut out. Clothes just fell away or disappeared all together. Nobody ever hopped around on one foot trying to get their socks off, and underwear just slid off without leaving stripes and dents on the skin.

Ellie placed her other hand against her side, along the ribs, just under the small swell of her breast. This was where she kept her friend, awake or asleep, safe inside her heart.

“I love you, Riley,” she said, knowing that Tess wouldn’t hear the words if Ellie didn’t want her to. This was her dream. She was safe here. She was the boss.

Riley’s voice was muffled.

“Quaid! Start the reactor! Free Mars!”

Ellie giggled in her sleep. Joel, stirring the latest batch of simmering bone broth, heard her and smiled. It was good to know she was happy again, even if just for a few moments, even if only in her dreams. He went back to stirring, being careful not to let the spoon rattle too often against the side of the pot. He didn’t want to wake her up.

“Gonna let you sleep awhile,” he whispered to the smiling girl.

“You let me sleep all night, you butt.”

“Ah, I couldn’t sleep, girl.” Joel lied to her easily, stooping to gather a thick branch. With just a little elbow grease, this would make some good fuel for their new fire pit. “Figured there wasn’t much point in both of us not gettin’ any rest.”

She sighed, shaking her head with feigned, overdramatic concern. “Fine. Be that way. Ignore Doctor Ellie. But if you get sick or exhausted and fall over or whatever, don’t expect me to drag your heavy butt indoors again. Once was enough. Doctor Ellie only helps those who help themselves.”

Joel chuckled, watching as she pranced through the snow and bent down to gather a few sticks of her own. They had managed to snag a couple of rabbits that morning. They’d go to sleep with full bellies that night. The tin of gourmet tea they’d found in the abandoned old house attached to this yard would be a nice treat too. Tea never really went bad. You just had to steep it longer. It was not as good as coffee, but it would do just fine.

The snow began to fall. He looked up at the graying sky.

“We oughta head back soon. Looks like another big one’s blowin’ in.”

Ellie looked up. He’d been teaching her how to read the weather. She was not very good at it yet, but she nodded sagely, remembering what he had said about the things the sky would tell you if you’d just pay attention to it.

_Clouds going in different directions means bad weather coming. Probably hail or something just as shitty._

“Looks like you called it exactly right this morning. Another snowstorm. It’s going to be nasty, huh?”

“Won’t be so bad if we can get inside before it starts comin’ down too hard.”

“I hope you’re right.” It was cold out here and she couldn’t wait to get inside again.

“I’m right,” Joel said, legs stretched out on the carpet. He was wearing nothing his thermal underwear, relaxing, stirring the little saucepot. “Tea doesn’t go bad.”

“Not even…” she began, picking up the discarded, little paper envelope that had held the tea. She scanned it quickly, reading aloud what she found. “Not even Perfect Autumn Peach blend? Because that sounds like it could go all kinds of wrong at the drop of a hat.”

He chuckled and gave the pot another swirl with the plastic mixing spoon. “If it is, it’ll be a painless way to go, I’m sure.”

“You promise?” she asked, sitting close to him. The floor of the office wasn’t particularly warm, but it was nowhere as cold as the frozen ground outside by the fire pit. The little multi-fuel camp stove was lit and sitting on top of a pair of cinder blocks. The compact, folding wire frame was arranged over the low flame made by the stove. Joel was simmering some of the tea she had found a few days ago, before this storm had blown in and left them snowed inside their little fortress. “‘Cause if this fancy schmancy stuff isn’t some sort of elaborate scheme to poison me, I’m going to be very disappointed.”

Joel exhaled slowly, his back aching from sitting on the unforgiving floor for too long. “Why on earth would I poison you, girl?”

“Because you’ve got cabin fever!” she explained. “You’re crazy and dangerous now, cooking up all sorts of mad schemes. And I don’t blame you, buddy. We’ve been snowed in for ten days!”

“Three days.”

“Long enough for one of us to go crazy!” she snickered. “And if you want to get to Crazy Town before I do, you’d better hurry because I can feel it. I’m about to snap, Joel. Snap like a little redheaded twig!”

Joel chuckled. “You’ll see. It’s gotta break sooner or later.”

“The storm?” she asked, “Or my sanity?”

“Take your pick,” he groaned, stretching.

She hopped to her feet. Her back was thirty years younger than his. At her age, she didn’t know what soreness truly was yet, the bone deep and abiding stiffness that comes as years stack on top of years and old injuries multiply and settle in. She nudged him with her foot, wrapped snugly inside two layers of socks. If Ellie were going to go stark raving mad, she planned to do it with warm feet.

“Okay, Joel. But promise me when you finally go nuts, you’ll smother me in my sleep. I don’t want to suffer.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“I fucking knew it! You’ve gone nuts!” She squealed and darted away from him, dancing across the carpeted floor to the window on the other side of their sofa bed. “Who will save me from this crazy Texan and the brutal pillowing he’s got planned for me? Who? Who, I say!”

“Pretty sure you’re shit outta luck, girl.” Joel sipped the tea from a spoon, sampling it. “Soon as I finish drinkin’ this tea, I’m gonna pick up the first pillow I can find and see if I can’t smother a little peace and quiet into this room.”

Ellie laughed from her place at the window and watched the world outside.

The horses were out there, frolicking inside the safe confines of the fenced-in backyard. All three of them had their saddles and bridles off. They could trot around unfettered. This was as naked as a horse could get. The stallions were feeling frisky. The mare, Ellie’s horse, could sense it.

Ellie peeked out from behind the curtain and watched the mare playfully dancing about in tightening circles, drawing the males in towards her. The stallions were excited about what was to come – there was no mistaking that!

“Holy cow,” Ellie whispered, her hand against the glass, watching the action beginning to unfold. “Those are some huge dongs.”

“That’s why they say ‘hung like a horse’,” Tommy chuckled from his seat at the kitchen table. The big dining room of the bed and breakfast was too fancy for him. He didn’t like to eat in there.

Joel was behind her. Was he there a second ago? His hand slid up her arm, coming to rest on her small shoulder. That hand was huge, even moreso than she remembered it being. When did he get so tall?

“Y’know,” he began in a slow drawl, “normally stallions won’t share a mare like that.”

“They won’t?” Her voice was nervous, higher than normal. She kept her eyes on the events outside the window.

“Nope,” Tommy said, standing up, stretching. She could see him reflected in the glass. He ambled over towards her. “Most of the time, one male will put together his own harem of three or four females.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling Tommy’s hand on her other shoulder. It was just as big as Joel’s. They were so damn tall today. She wanted to be tall too. She hoped they’d teach her this trick.

“But sometimes,” Joel said, “well, I reckon maybe things might go a little bit different… if the female don’t mind.”

Ellie giggled deeply, all the way at the back of her throat. “Looks to me like she’s fine with what’s gonna happen out there.”

“But is she fine with what might happen in here?” Tommy’s voice, always a little raspy, was deeper now; his tone was gentle.

Their hands were on her shoulders, rubbing softly. She looked up at the men. So tall. She grinned sheepishly, cast her eyes down to her feet where it was safer. She wouldn’t get lost in her shoes the way she would in those eyes.

“Yeah,” she squeaked. Her voice was too high. Why wouldn’t it go back to normal, a little more grown up, like she remembered it being? She didn’t want to be so nervous. She wanted to be cool. “I think she is.”

It felt weird to talk about herself in the third person. Riley did that sometimes, when she was at her most regal, usually when she was issuing commands from the rolling office chair that was her dorm room throne.

Joel reached down for the hem of her shirt. He lifted it up a little, so he could get his hands on her thermal shirt, all tucked inside her jeans like she always wore it. He pulled both shirts up at once. She realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. Sometimes, when she was in camp, she went without one. Joel had never complained. Maybe he liked it? She didn’t know. It was not like she had any boobs anyway. She lifted her arms high, and the shirts came off. Her ponytail holder came off with them, apparently. Her hair fell loose, tumbling down all the way to her waist. When had she let it grow out like this? She hadn’t worn her hair this long since she was a little kid.

Joel’s turned her in place, so he could pick her up from behind, his big hands under her armpits, lifting her up. She tried not to swing her legs too much as she ascended. Why were guys so tall? It wasn’t fair. She’d always been too short as it was, and now this? She was shorter than ever! It wasn’t fair.

Tommy’s hands worked loose the button of her jeans. His fingers eased the zipper down. He tugged the denim down her legs. Her panties rode along on the trip. When he pulled the jeans free of her feet, she saw that somehow her shoes and socks were gone. Maybe she was never wearing them? She couldn’t remember for certain. She was completely naked now. She was certain of that much.

“Ain’t that just the sweetest little peach you ever did see?” Joel said to Tommy.

“Sure is,” Tommy answered.

Ellie began to wiggle and squirm, giggling and squealing.

“Put me down, butt head! This isn’t a peepshow!”

Joel laughed, deeply, sexily. He set her down on her feet. She glanced around the floor quickly. Her clothes were nowhere to be seen. Neither were theirs. Had they been naked all along? Had they been sporting hardons this whole time? She grinned. They were so tall today that she didn’t need to kneel down to get to them. In fact, if she did get on her knees, she might be looking up at those amazing things. This way was better. She reached out, tentatively wrapping her fingers around them, one in each of her small hands. They were so warm. So hard. So awesome.

Joel stroked the back of her head. Tommy pushed her long bangs out of her face. She stroked them, grinning goofily. Why couldn’t she be cooler?

“Get closer,” she murmured. “You’re too far apart. Help me out here, Miller dudes.”

Each brother took a half-step towards the other.

“Closer,” she purred.

Another half-step.

“Perfect.”

She could feel the heat rising up from between their naked bodies. Tommy rested his hand on his older brother’s shoulder. Joel’s hand found Tommy’s waist. They each put a hand on the girl’s narrow shoulders. Ellie kissed each of their hard members. She brushed the tip of Joel’s against the end of Tommy’s, rubbing the velvety soft heads together. She braced herself for a rebuke, fearing she might be going too far.

One of the men groaned. The other inhaled sharply. She held the hard things by their bases and slid them together sensuously. They were so big in her little hands. She grinned mischievously, thrilled. She was too young for this stuff and she knew it. She felt like she was getting away with something, like being allowed to stay up late on a holiday or getting a second helping of dessert on your birthday. She hoped she wouldn’t get in trouble for this later. She slid her hands up and down the length of the warm, hard shafts, slowly, taking her time, trying vainly to wrap her short fingers all the way round these big things.

“Good girl,” Tommy sighed.

“She sure is,” Joel agreed, his large hand caressing Tommy’s smooth, trim flank affectionately.

She made the head of Tommy’s shaft travel round and round the swollen, purplish crest of his older brother’s member. She gracefully guided Joel’s head as it traveled the underside of Tommy’s length, slowly working it from the edge of the younger man’s ballsack all the way to the end of his tingling shaft, stopping only when the little holes in the bulbous tips were almost touching. She pressed the engorged heads together. The little openings became mouths, each seeking the other out.

“It’s like they’re kissing,” she murmured. “See? You guys should do that.”

She glanced up, still working their hot, hard shafts together, hoping the brothers would kiss. She smiled. They already were. She could have watched these men kiss all day. They didn’t kiss like girls do. They didn’t kiss each other like they would have kissed a girl. It was different. Rough. Hungry. She began to stroke the big things in her hands again. The men pushed towards her, thrusting slowly at each other with their hips, the little girl trapped between them, smiling wildly, not daring to let go of the pulsing things in her hands.

Suddenly, she was in Joel’s arms. She always felt so safe there. When had he picked her up? Tommy was just ahead, leading the way. Naked, the men and the girl, they left the kitchen through the door, but it didn’t open to the dining room. Instead, they entered the bedroom up on the third floor, the one with the cool bed built into the window-filled nook. No stairs were involved. Stairs weren’t all that important, so who cared?

She could see the big Motel 6 sign outside the window, mounted atop the big pole in the front yard. There was something off about that, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Joel placed her on the bed. She scooted away as Tommy reached for her. She giggled.

“No way! I’m too young for this stuff!” She squeezed herself into the far corner of the bed, near the pair of big windows that should look out on the backyard and the trees, but instead showed a view of the alley outside the dorm room. It didn’t make much sense, but she had good memories of that familiar, comforting view so she let it slide. Anyone coming down that alley would have a great view of a naked little girl’s butt, which made her smile. She giggled, sitting on the edge of the windowsill, secretly hoping someone down there in the alley was enjoying the show going on up here, someone in particular: a pretty, dark-skinned girl who would be so proud of her little friend right now

“Ellie,” Joel said, in that tone she liked and disliked, though never both at the same time.

His hard thing was pointed right at her. So was Tommy’s. This was what they had come up here for: release. She couldn’t leave them hanging. Hanging like their balls, large and round and full and needing relief. She licked her lips. She wanted to do all kinds of stuff, but she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t old enough, not by a long shot.

“I know what we can do,” she grinned devilishly. Riley had seen a porno once, and she had told Ellie all about it. There had been one scene with two girls, Riley had explained, and they had pressed their twats together and rubbed them on each other till they came. Riley had used the first two fingers on each hand to simulate the girls’ legs and how they placed them so that the girls could fit together to make that happen. Ellie had never forgotten.

“Sit down on the bed, facing each other,” she said enthusiastically, holding her left and right hands, two fingers out and spread open on each hand, pushing her pair of scissored fingers together, just as Riley had done, “like this. See?”

They sat on the mattress. Joel’s leg slid over Tommy’s. Tommy’s other leg draped over Joel’s. Ellie had to climb down from the bed to see everything. She told the men that she had to get out of the way to make room for them, but it was really because she wanted to see the show up close. The parts she wanted to see, the throbbing boy parts, were almost touching. She reached out with small hands, touched the firm curves of their naked butts, and nudged them closer with her open, insistent palms.

“Scootch,” she encouraged, patting their bottoms, almost a gentle, playful spanking. She made whip sounds with her mouth. “Wuh-psssh! C’mon, little doggies! Get in that coral. Wuh-psssh! Yeah! There we go! Good boys! Just like that.”

Their swollen balls were pushed together tightly; one pair snug against the other, each man’s drawn tightly against his own body, swollen and taut inside his puckered scrotum, pressed close to the other man’s, almost too close. The pressure of their balls, squeezed and packed like this, was a little painful, but in that way that hurt so good. Their hard lengths twitched and throbbed, yearning, needing, but daylight shone between the shafts. Of course, Ellie realized too late, dongs were curved, like bananas, the yellow fruit she’d seen pictures of in some of her books. Boys can’t really smoosh their parts together quite like girls can.

She nodded, knowing what to do. “Hold on, guys… I got this.”

She reached out, took one in each hand, bringing them together. The brothers moaned. Tommy shuddered a little, tucking his chin to his chest. Joel sucked in air through his teeth in a strained hiss. Legs entwined, they were both leaning back on their arms. Broad, powerful chests rose and fell. Sweat formed, gleaming in the curling mat of hair across their torsos. Thick fingers held tight to the bed sheets. Their hands were busy keeping themselves upright. They tried to strain against each other, probing for contact, needing touch. The hard lengths yearned to connect, but they couldn’t quite manage it. They needed her help. That was fine with Ellie. She has always been a helper.

“Here,” she whispered, trying to snug her tiny fingers together around them, making a sleeve of her hands, a space for them to be together. A warm, tight space.

“Tighter,” Tommy wheezed.

Joel tried to say something. His voice caught in his throat as she squeezed them more firmly. They throbbed and pulsed in her hands.

“Don’t get mad, okay?” she asked, knowing she was about to do something she probably shouldn’t.

Ellie dipped her head low, her ridiculously long hair getting in her way, just a little. She made sure her tongue was wet. She opened her mouth, began to trace a figure eight around the pair of swollen red-violet heads jutting up from her hands. Around and around went her tongue, around and in between, around and around one, between them again, and then around and around the other, and then circled outside both of them, over and over, until the flesh was shiny with her spit and the big, strong men were trembling, bulging muscles quivering, long limbs quaking, held fast by the attentive, loving mouth of the devoted little girl between them.

Joel gave a shuddering, juddering groan. He needed more. His hips pushed up, moving him deeper into the tunnel of her hands, sliding along Tommy’s shaft, the turgid head pushing out above her fist before retreating again and then pushing towards the daylight again. Tommy exhaled in a long, delicious release of air. He pushed himself into the sanctuary of her hands too, just a little. They were pistons now, cycling slowly, but out of synch.

“No, no. You have to do it together,” the small girl instructed in her ‘Miss Ellie, New Teacher In Town’ voice. She hadn’t used that voice since she and Joel had explored The Big Darby together at some distant point in the past, or maybe it would be at sometime in the future. She wasn’t sure when it was or will be, but she knew she had to teach them how to do this. They needed her. “Teamwork, okay? Here we go… in… and out… and in… and out… just like that, good boys… in…”

They let the girl guide them, telling them just what to do and how to do it. Soon they were working in tandem, thrusting into the tight grip of the welcoming hands, rubbing against her palms, against each other, pulling back, pushing in again, over and over, moving slowly, in harmony. She breathed hot air on them from her open lips, warming flesh already blazing hot from lust and friction. She puckered her lips and lowered a long string of spit from her mouth. At the orphanage, whenever the nuns weren’t around, Kevin Chiang, the boy who stole her favorite Snoopy doll and set fire to it, used to pin her down and do the same thing to her, letting a long, gooey thread of spit dangle from his mouth, directly over her face as she screamed and cussed and tried to kick at him before it landed on her cheek with a plop. It was so gross and she hated it. It was different now. She wasn’t the one under the swinging pendulum of saliva. She grinned and let the blob of wetness fall, covering the thrusting shapes, drizzling them with a squiggly, thick rope, lubricating them. The men grunted appreciatively and pistoned themselves in and out of her hands with even more ardor. She grinned. Apparently, it was only gross when Kevin had done it to her. Joel and Tommy actually seemed to like the spit. Boys were so weird sometimes. Relieved by the added wetness, they moved faster and faster. Lubricated machinery. Pistons. Running smoothly inside her hands. She worked up another mouthful of spit and did it again. They moaned in gratitude. She smiled, pretended a little. The swollen caps of their shafts were her breakfast. Her spit was the syrup. Her mouth was the spout. Ellie had never been one to let her waffles go unsmothered. She licked them, tasting, smiling as they groaned, both straining for the forbidden pleasure of a little girl’s mouth, tantalizingly close but always out of reach – she made sure of that.

Joel kissed Tommy, sliding his tongue into his younger brother’s mouth. Tommy was happy to receive it.

Ellie’s fists were full of sheets now. She was at the foot of the bed, watching. Joel and Tommy were so close together now that one was practically sitting in the lap of the other. They ground their long, hard members against each other’s belly. Their bodies were sweaty. Muscles rippled beneath glistening skin. They clung to each other, embracing with thick, strong arms. The brothers held on to one another as tightly as they could. Their balls were practically inflated, their paired sacks had become big red apples smooshed between their entangled legs, pressed down by corded, sweaty thighs, held in a vise between their bodies and the bed. It had to hurt but they didn’t seem to care. The brothers made the most amazing sounds, like animals. Deep grunts. Harsh growls. They were kissing so fiercely that Ellie was glad she wasn’t on the receiving end. It would bruise more than just her lips. Her entire face would be blue and purple the next day, just like the intimidating, rock hard forms jutting up from between their slick, glossy thighs, hammering away at the would-be womb they’d made of their pressed together stomachs, assaulting each other with the unrestrained lust pent up inside their hairy, sinewy bodies.

They needed to cum. She could sense it. But they wouldn’t. Not yet. This moment was too perfect. This moment would only be ruined by letting them cum. So she didn’t let them. They’d just have to keep going like this forever, and she’d keep watching because it was safer to watch. Guys were big and she was little, so very little, and this was kind of scary to her but it was fun to watch because that was all she had to do. Just watch. Watch forever. Watch and not take part anymore. That was the safest thing a girl could do. The guys wanted to use their things on somebody so badly? Let them use those things on each other. She’d just watch.

She remembered that her Walkman was in one of the drawers under the bed. She hadn’t put it there. Riley was the one who left it. Had her friend been trying to hide it? Or did Riley leave it for her? She didn’t know, but she made sure to choose the right drawer. The other one was full of screaming and fire and blood and she didn’t want that stuff getting out.

Small fingers fumbled with pushbuttons a little bigger than they should have been. Walkman music filled the room. This was one of Riley’s tapes. Ellie’s tapes wouldn’t have worked. They rocked too hard, which was not what was called for here. There weren’t many rocking guitars on Riley’s tapes, but the music coming out was perfect for stuff like this.

A woman sang to the brothers and the girl. “Don't want this thing but can't let go. Even though, I need it so. Your arms they soothe me but I ain't no game. I ain't no toy, I ain't just brain. This ain't no movie, man.”

Yes it is, Ellie thought to herself. It’s the best movie I’ve ever seen. Even better than Invasion: USA.

“Emotions deep down inside of me, I'm trying to hide but they keep finding me,” the woman lamented soulfully. “I want to lay low but continuously you do all the right things.”

She reached out to touch them, to feel the heat they were creating, to sap some of it away safely, so they didn’t catch fire. She wanted to touch Joel first. She loved him the most. Her fingers reached for his glistening back, beneath the scratches Tommy had made with his fingernails.

But Joel wasn’t there.

She was all alone in the bed. She sat up, frightened. She hated being alone. She swung her legs to the edge of the mattress, felt the cold, cold floor beneath her feet. Her toes recoiled from it. Thighs clenched. Her body was burning up. When was the last time she had been horny like this?

_Fuck. I’m on fire. What a great dream._

She stood up. Her arms and legs felt twice as long as they had been a minute ago. She pushed her hair out of the way and found it to be about shoulder length, like it was supposed to be. She was still short, but not nearly as short as she had been in the dream. Her loins were aching. When was the last time she had even been aware that she had loins?

“ffffuck,” she hissed. The floor was an iceberg. Her pussy was a volcano.

She scooped up her pistol and padded to the door. It was closed. No cold draft was coming in from the bottom, her toes told her, and they never lied about such things. She dropped to one knee. Old shopping bags had been stuffed into the gap from the other side of the door. He had taken steps to make sure she didn’t get cold while he was gone.

“Joel.” She was smiling but she was mad too. “You sweet butt munch.”

Trying to touch the frozen floor as little as possible, she scurried across the room and peered out from behind the concealment of the old curtain, looking down on the world outside. Water dripped from the roof. Small trickles of water worked their way down the glass, like the beads of sweat down the backs of the men in her dream. One of them was out there. She smiled at the sight of him. He was across the road, under the corrugated metal awning of the neighboring house, tending to foil-wrapped food cooking over the neat little fire pit.

She grinned. “Breakfast in bed today, I guess.”

He could be generous sometimes. It made her heart feel light. He could be sexy too. It made her pussy continue to smolder.

_You know… if I'm really quick about it…_

She hesitated. She had to make a decision. There wasn’t much time. There never was for this kind of thing.

_I shouldn’t… but I haven’t in… God only knows how long… Since before the University, that’s for sure._

Her aching, throbbing clit pleaded wordlessly with her. Erotic hunger filled the girl’s body; her libido was starved, desperate for release. Desires that had been buried all winter were suddenly exhumed.

_Fuck it! I’ll be super quick!_

She dashed back to the warm covers and buried herself in them. She rubbed her hands together as quickly as she could, heating them up. Fast, warm, nimble fingers shoved her underwear out of the way. She briefly thought about undoing a few buttons on her borrowed flannel shirt and playing with her breasts a little, but she couldn’t wait.

_Hurry! HurryHurryHurry!!_

She took a deep breath. Her ribs didn’t hurt anymore. She closed her eyes shut, kept one ear focused on the door and the hallway beyond, listening for boots, Just in case.

_Fuck… lemme see… where was i?_

_Joel and Tommy were grinding their dicks on each other… And they were… um… kissing… and making lots of noise… and then… um… what should they do? … Umm… They start biting at each other’s necks and shoulders…_

Her fingers went to work. It was like riding a bicycle. You never forgot how.

_And… Oh! And they’re groaning and cussing and grunting… and they keep going at it, humping their dicks together… but they don’t get to cum until I let them… because it’s my dream and they have to wait until I’m ready for them… And they know I’m watching and they’re trying to show me who’s the better man… who can last the longest and flex their muscles the biggest and grunt the loudest and all that stuff’s that important to guys… And I’m playing that song Riley loved and I’m watching from the edge of the bed, looking up at them, and… Jeez Louise, how old was I in this dream? Because everything was so big… bigger than I remember it being when I really was in that room… and it’s not just their dicks, and those things were fucking huge in my hand… Stop it, Ellie. Don’t get distracted… Okay, so they’re all tangled up and sliding their dicks on each other as hard and as fast as they can… and I finally let them cum because I can’t take it anymore… But I tell them they have to cum at the same time… and they scream and bury their heads against each other… and their poor balls were totally about to burst… so it…_

“unhh”

_… it all comes squirting out… in big…_

“mmnnnn”

_… big gushes… and it shoots straight up… and gets all over their… their chests… it gets in the hair on… on their… their chests…_

“nnnhhh”

_… and then they… I tell them… they have to lick… lick each other clean…_

“nnnnffff”

_… and then it gets in their mouths… and in their beards… so…_

“uhnnnn”

_… so when they… when they kiss… it…_

“hhhnnnnN”

_… it gets all… all mixed… together… in… in… tongues… mouths… kissi-_

“NNNNNNGG!”

A cry choked off sharply. Gasping. Shuddering. More sounds filled the room. She writhed against the mattress, twisting the sheets up as her heels dug into the bed. Her hands were clamped tightly over her spasming pussy, fat and wet, searing hot, small fingers trying to keep the inferno safely inside. Her cunt was boiling over, scalding her hands.

“oh fuck!”

She had arched her back across the bed, bridging the gulf between the waking world and the world of her dream, but now she felt herself coming back down to earth, slowly, drifting, in no big hurry.

“ffff- hhhh- oh! ahh! ah! oh fffuck! oh man! mmm… _mmm_ …”

Gradually, she caught her breath in thick gulps, relaxed, returned to herself.

_Boosh._

She snickered guiltily, as quietly as she could.

_I am a ninja._

She left very un-ninja-like footprints in the slushy snow when she crossed the road where Joel was waiting by the fire.

He nodded as she approached and made a space for her when she plopped down next to him in the snow.

She stared talking, the words tumbling out all at once, unconnected to anything in particular, it seemed to him. Apparently, she just wanted to talk today. He was in the mood to hear her voice. He didn’t hear it enough these days.

“Back when I was a little girl at St. Philomena’s, I used to have really long hair. … All the way down to my waist. … The nuns said every girl should have long hair because it looked pretty on them and it’s a woman’s crowning glory and all that. Personally, I think it was because they didn’t want to cut our hair all the time… It was always getting in the way when I wrestled with the other kids. … Did you and Tommy ever wrestle?”

She was pleased with how completely innocent the question sounded.

“Oh sure,” Joel answered, stuffing a handful of broken sticks down into the fire pit. “All the damn time.”

“Who usually won?”

“I did. … But every now and then, Tommy would surprise me. … He could be a slippery little shit.”

She nodded, knowing all about that. Naked guys could get very slippery, from all the sweat and the cum and the slippery muscles and stuff. As he cooked the meat, she tried not to squirm. It wasn’t easy. Her pussy, dormant for so long, was suddenly roaring back to life.

_My twat’s like a bear coming out of hibernation. It’s fucking starving._

She grinned.

_Starved for some fucking._

She wanted to giggle. She hid her face behind her hands instead.

Joel noticed. He cocked an eyebrow.

“You okay, Ellie?”

“Sun’s too bright today.”

Joel nodded. It was the first cloudless, clear blue day they’d had in a week.

She reached into her purse and pulled out her pink, heart-shaped sunglasses. Her red high heels click-clacked on the sidewalk as she strutted through downtown Los Angeles. She was the prettiest angel in a city filled with them, and she knew it. She turned the head of a pair of construction workers, one dark haired, the other blonde, both bearded and sexy. She drew the stare of a pretty, well-dressed lady with skin the color of the sweetest chocolate. She was used to being the center of attention. But she was as aloof as she was appealing. She didn’t stop for any of them. None of them caught her eye.

The dog caught her eye as she was halfway across the street.

Bony and thin, miserable looking. It didn’t bark at her. It didn’t wag its tail either.

_It’s so skinny._

Half coyote, Joel would tell her later.

She talked to it, cautiously, her voice sweet and unthreatening.

“Hey, boy. Are you tame? Need a friend?”

Joel’s bootsteps crunched behind her, approaching quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she expected to see him pass her. She saw the gun in his hand instead. The metallic, ratcheting click of the hammer being thumbed back was loud. The dog didn’t move, it only flinched a little.

“Don’t shoot it. It’s just hungry,” she said wearily but gently, not wanting to spook either the dog or Joel, fearing a violent outburst from one of the pair more than the other. She sighed forlornly.

_It doesn’t have to die, Joel._

“Come on out of there,” Joel bellowed, making the starving dog wince. “Come out NOW!”

A few days later, while making dinner, Joel would tell her that while he was still inside the store they had been searching, just as Ellie was walking out into the street, he had looked out the big window and noticed the fresh footprints leading into the far side of the building across the street – footprints not made by either Ellie or himself.

Across the street, a man came out of the dark building very slowly, his hands up. Ellie’s gun was suddenly in her hand, pointed right at his heart. He was as thin and miserable as the dog. He smiled wanly, trying to look harmless and hopeful.

“Wasn’t planning on doing anything. Just watching, that’s all,” he said carefully. “Wanted to make sure you guys were friendly. That’s all.”

“We ain’t,” Joel replied grimly. “Use your other hand, take that gun out, throw it over here.”

The gun was a sawed-off shotgun, dangling from his belt in a makeshift holster fashioned out of some kind of leather tool pouch.

“It’s empty,” the stranger said. The dog twitched reflexively when the man tossed it towards them. It landed with a soft thud in the snow. “I ran out of shells for it back in Kittredge, back thataway.” He motioned slowly with his hand, indicating somewhere to the south and east. “Bunch of bad guys there. I barely got away. Nobody else in my group did.”

Joel told Ellie to pick up the gun. She did. It reminded her of her old shotgun, but this one had only a single barrel, chopped short, like hers had been, but the sawing had been done crudely, at a slight angle, not filed smooth afterward, and the wooden stock on this one had been cut away, leaving only an unevenly shaped pistol grip wrapped in duct tape. The lever to break it open was familiar, similar to the weapon she’d lost months ago, but this gun had a hammer, sort of like the one on Joel’s revolver. The hammers of her shotgun had been hidden inside the gun. She tucked her Beretta under her arm and thumbed the lever, opening the breech. There wasn’t a shell inside, not even a spent one. The weapon was empty. He had been telling the truth about not having any ammo, most likely, unless this was some elaborate deception gone wrong. No one carried an empty gun in a world like this.

“28 gauge?” she asked. She still had a few of her old 28 gauge shells floating around at the bottom of her backpack. This could come in handy.

“No, sorry. 16,” he answered. “My uncle’s. It’s pretty old, and real hard to find ammo for.”

“I had the same problem,” she said, making conversation out of habit. She hadn’t had anyone to talk to but Joel for months. Wearily, bitterly, she knew that Joel would probably kill this man in another minute or two, so she had decided to make the most of it while she could.

The gaunt man told them that he was just looking for someplace warm to stay for a few days, not very long, just until he could get his strength back. This town looked pretty big, right?

“No, it’s small. Real small,” Joel warned. “Barely enough room for the two of us. Ain’t no place for you here.”

“Please, mister. _Please_ ,” the man begged. “I’ll stay in one of the buildings at the other end of town. I won’t cross to this side. I won’t bother anyone. I promise.”

“Keep walkin’, I said,” Joel snarled, impending violence in his voice.

Ellie said nothing. Once, she would have wanted to help a stranger in need. She would have argued with Joel about the scene unfolding in front of her. Now things are different. She didn’t know this man; that made him a danger.

“You came from Kittredge?” she asked. It had been a longer winter. She had memorized the maps in Joel’s pack, as much from boredom as curiosity.

“That’s right,” he nodded, smiling a little, hoping he could connect with this girl before the man killed him. Maybe they’d let him stay if he could make a friend of her. “Before that, I was staying in Foxton, with some good people. Been there the last few years. But we got hit by these guys in trucks. Ex-army, I think. Markings on their trucks said thay came from Denver. No QZ there, not anymore. Not for years. Buncha bandits, now. We held ‘em off until they finally gave up and left. But our barricades were all smashed up and the fences were down. Infected got in. I barely made it out. I’ve been on the road ever sinc-“

”No one asked you for your life story,” Joel barked. “We asked you to leave. Now are you gonna walk out of here peaceably? Of do you want this to go a different way?”

“I’ll go. I’ll go,” he sighed forlornly, slumping further into his ragged, ill-fitting clothes.

Joel and Ellie followed closely behind as they escorted him and his dog back the way they had came, retracing his footsteps to the edge of town.

“Start walkin’.” Joel would kill this man for the slightest reason; his voice made that clear.

The man risked a look back over his shoulder at the girl. “Can I have my gun back? It’s empty. But I might be able to bluff my way out of trouble if I had it.”

Ellie glanced sidelong at Joel, the old shotgun in one hand, her pistol in the other, still leveled at the stranger. Joel gave a quick shake of his head. It was their gun now. But Ellie had her limits as to how much suffering she was prepared to inflict on someone who’s only proven crime was the unforgivable sin of being a stranger.

With all her strength, grunting with the effort of it, she spun in a circle and hurled the gun out into the ocean of snow beyond edge of town. The weapon flew a fair distance before landing. It made a large, obvious hole in the sea of white; a smooth surface marred only by the tracks leading into Dumont, Colorado, those of the man and the dog.

“Pick it up on your way out,” she said. She ignored Joel’s hard look of disapproval.

“Thanks,” the man mumbled, weary but grateful.

He turned to trudge away.

“Don’t go north,” Ellie said suddenly. “There’s a place up there, around Nederland and the Eldora Mountain Resort. It’s full of cannibals.”

“Jesus,” the ragged man muttered, utterly without hope.

The can of Spaghetti-O’s she’d found in the store was still bulging heavily in her pocket. Seemingly on a whim, she pulled it out of her jacket.

“Here,” she said. “For you and your dog.”

She tossed it to him. He caught it. Holding it with both hands, as though it might fly away like manna returning to heaven, he looked at the can, and then at her, but not at Joel.

For a moment, it seemed as though the shambling, pathetic stick figure might cry. He nodded gravely. His voice cracked when he spoke. This girl had returned his gun. She had given him food. This was the only kindness anyone had shown him in ages. It wasn’t a kind world anymore.

“God bless you.”

“Yeah,” she answered flatly. “Sure.” Her pistol remained pointed at him.

She stood there with Joel, watching the shuffling figures of the man and the dog get smaller and smaller against the expanse of white.

“Can we go back inside now?” she asked. She hated what she had done, even if she understood the brutal necessity of it.

“Not until we can’t see him no more. Not so much as a damn speck. Then we wait a little while longer, just to make sure.”

She didn’t say anything. She waited and watched, cold.

The man never came back. Two days later, another heavy snow fell over Dumont. The tracks disappeared and it was as though the man had never existed at all.

It was snowing so heavily that a late-evening light crept in through the window even though it was noontime. The sun was up there somewhere, but she couldn’t locate it precisely. There was nothing but a fuzzy, diffuse glow, a large smudge of slightly whiter white in the middle of the enormous, low canopy of white that blanketed the world outside. The rechargeable LED camp light sat near the window, vainly trying to capture enough solar rays to be useful when night fell. It wouldn’t be, and Joel knew it. He had a ‘Plan B’ though. He usually did.

He had a box of crayons and some paper clips. Joel used Ellie’s knife to cut a string from the old cotton mop in the janitor’s closet downstairs. He took three crayons, peeled off the wrappers, pushed them against each other and threaded the cotton string through the gap in the center. He had the girl bind the cluster together with a few paper clips and lit the string. And just like that: A candle.

Glum as she was, Ellie was nevertheless impressed. She’d used crayons since she was a little girl, but this usage had never occurred to her before. “That… is pretty fucking cool, Joel.”

“Yeah, I’m a regular MacGyver.”

“A regular McWho?”

“Guy who used to be on TV. He would fight robots and terrorists with bombs he made out of candy bars and bug spray and tin foil… I don’t remember all the ingredients. Maple syrup, maybe? Bathroom tile cleaner? I don’t know.”

“Are… are you making that up?”

“Yeah,” he said. It was easier than trying to convince her that such a show had actually existed. His mom had watched reruns of it all the time. He wished he’d paid more attention to the episode where MacGyver had made a big batch of plastic explosive in a washing machine from shit he’d found laying around a kitchen pantry.

He told her to sit the crayon-candle upright carefully in an old aluminum pie pan. He said that each candle would burn about an hour or so. They would need to make several to get through the long, dim days ahead.

While they worked on the batch of candles, there was pain in his eyes and his eyes were for her, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. He watched her while her deft fingers worked the paper clips around the crayons.

“Don’t look at me like that, Joel,” she grumped, not making eye contact, but feeling his eyes on her all the same. “I’m fine, okay?”

He said nothing but looked away with a sort of weary sort of resignation.

_Don’t give up on me._

She became frustrated with the thing she was doing. The paperclip didn’t want to cooperate. She grimaced, forced it into place, cutting a deep gouge into the side of the red crayon. She didn’t care.

_It’s all going to melt away pretty soon anyway. Nothing lasts._

She sighed, disappointed in everything and everyone.

_He always knows what to say… and what to do… Why can’t he say the thing I need to hear… whatever that is?_

_I don’t want him to say anything… unless it’s the right thing… but I don’t know what that is…_

She grunted, irritated, as she worked.

_I’m not a monster for what I did… I’m not like those… people._

_I’m still me._

_Right?_

_I have to be more like him. He kills when he has to… and that’s what I did. I killed those people… I killed him… because I had to… because of what he was going to do to me… I had to do it… and he deserved to die… and I didn’t deserve to be raped and shit… so I did what I did… and he had it coming… Right, Joel? And I let that poor guy and his dog have some food because that was the right thing to do too. Right?_

_Right?_

“Right,” Joel said through the closed door of the bathroom. “But you gotta make sure you put that little pinhole in the lid first. It won’t work without it, but if the hole’s too big, then it’s just gonna burn up like normal, and you won’t get any charcloth out of it.”

In the light of the clear day streaming in the through the frosted-over window, Ellie studied the little round tin of shoe polish and the small squares of blackened cloth that Joel had baked inside it earlier that morning. She held it close to her eyes, taking in every detail.

“And just one little spark will light this stuff?” she asked, a little incredulously. The little squares had been an old t-shirt before Joel had taken the scissors to it. He’d placed the pieces inside the small tin, stacked flat, not curled up, which was important for some reason. Then he’d used a nail to poke a teeny hole in the lid of the can. After that, he’d placed the sealed can down in the firepit and let it sit down there until smoke had stopped trickling out of the little hole. Then he’d flipped it over and left it down there until it had stopped smoking a second time. He’d fished it out with a pair of metal salad tongs, and when it had cooled off, he’d opened it up and taken the rigid black squares out of the can. He said that this stuff was even better than dryer lint for starting fires, but she was still skeptical. The cloth wasn’t brittle or flaking or anything, but it looked like it was already burned up.

_How could it burn a second time when it’s all black and sooty like this?_

“Sure will,” Joel answered. She could hear him pouring the bucket of bathwater into the toilet. He’d finished with his sponge bath. It would be her turn in a minute. “It’s not a big flame, but it burns steady.”

The door opened. She sat the tin on the windowsill and discretely watched as Joel emerged from his bath. A towel was wrapped around his waist. His hair was wet and tangled. He needed a haircut. They both did. Warm, moist air wafted out to her.

“You hit it with a spark, wrap it up in a tinder plug,” he continued to explain, standing in the doorway, rubbing a smaller hand towel through his hair. “Then all you have to –“

“Hush,” she snarked, pulling at his wet arm, trying to get him out of the doorway. “Tell me all about your lumberjack magic later. You’re letting all the warm air escape.”

“This is important stuff,” he chuckled, grabbing onto both sides of the doorframe with his hands, spreading his legs, blocking her from getting inside the warm room. “You need to hear this.”

She cackled, tried to squeeze around him, glad that he was being playful with her, and doing her best not to notice how near to being naked he was. The towel began to slip, she might have been helping it come loose, working her shoulder against his waist, just a little, and very discreetly.

“Gonna kick you in the balls in a second,” she laughed.

“Be nice now.”

“You oughta be nice to me,” she teased. “Or I won’t let you take the first bath anymore.”

“You aint’ foolin’ me, girl. You only want me to go first so I get the bathroom all warmed up for you.”

“Shit! You’re onto me!” she laughed, genuinely happy today, without rhyme or reason, She struggled, trying to squeeze through the door, but he wouldn’t step aside. She laughed, squirmed against him, turned him on. She didn’t see the masculine peak forming at the front of his towel. Her eyes were on the bathroom countertop, where her fresh clothes and towels were piled neatly, a warm bucket of water next to them. A pair of hot rocks, recently plucked from the fire pit, simmered at the bottom of a metal pail on the floor. She slapped futilely at his flank and his ass as he pressed against her, making a vice of his hip and the doorframe. Squeezed and trapped, she squeaked and struggled adorably. “Thought I had you fooled, dude.”

“I’m not stupid,” he said.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” she answered. He gave her ponytail a playful tug as he eased over and let her pass. She squealed and giggled, slapping at his wet hand.

He yanked her hair until she hissed through her teeth.

“You’ve got a name,” he said. “Nobody goes around without a name. Now tell me your name, girl.”

“Kiss my ass,” she grunted, up on her toes, shoes squeaking on the hardwood floor, squirming, trying to keep her hair from being torn out at the roots.

“I’ll do more than that,” he threatened. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“Fuck you,” she groaned as he released her hair, letting her ease down onto her feet.

“Almost what I had in mind,” he leered. “But not quite. C’mere. I’m gonna show you something.”

He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged the girl down the hall of the old house, towards the closed door of the master bedroom. He threw the door open and Ellie’s heart plunged.

A naked man was tied to the bed on all fours, his wrists held in place by ropes looped around the bedposts, a black bag over his head, cinched around his neck, his ass up in the air, rope around his knees, bound to the bed frame beneath, keeping him in place, keeping him ready for this moment.

“Oh no,” she moaned.

“Ain’t you I’m gonna fuck, little girl,” he crowed, slapping the naked man’s ass, making the prisoner flinch. “It’s your friend here that’s getting my cock in his ass. All you have to do is watch.”

“No,” she whimpered.

David unzipped his pants. It flopped out; already well on its way to being hard.

“Don’t have to be this way, of course,” he said, climbing up onto the bed, slapping his long, hard cock against the helpless man’s exposed ass cheeks. “All you have to do is tell me your name and I’ll fuck you instead.”

The naked man strained, bucked. He didn’t want this but he couldn’t stop what was about to happen.

“Who knows? I might even pull a few of those stitches out and fuck that hole too,” David said, running a finger, crusted with dried blood, around the edge of the unhealed wound. Ellie had put those stitches in herself. She blanched at the vile thing David was suggesting. “Bet that hole right there’ll be even tighter than the juicy little one you got between your legs, little girl.”

He lined up his erection with the man’s anus, pressing lightly, ready to enter. The man stopped squirming, frozen with terror.

“What’s it going to be, little angel? You gonna tell me your name? Or do you want to watch me fuck your friend here?”

Ellie tried to speak. No sound would come out. Her throat was paralyzed.

“I was kinda hoping that’s what you’d do,” David leered. With a grunt, he began to push his way into the tight confines of the naked man’s unwilling ass. “Figured you as just the kind of girl who’d like to watch. Glad to see I was right about you.”

Ellie’s fingers were fumbling with the front of her jeans. The naked man was moaning and grunting inside his hood. David was smiling, staring into her soul, violating her by raping someone else.

Her hands were inside her panties. The naked man was crying. David was thrusting hard, making sure she could feel every stroke of the assault. She rubbed her clit, matching the tempo David set, trying to share the degradation of the rape with the prisoner.

“I love a dirty girl like you,” David winked. “You’re my kind, Ellie.”

She began to cry. He knew. He had known all along. In a minute she was going to come, and so was David, and so was Joel. They would all come together and then the world would end. Her clothes were soaked. She tried to strip them off. It wasn’t easy. Her hand refused to stay away from her pussy for very long. She stepped out of them, kicked them aside. She never stopped looking at the men on the bed. David was giving it to Joel like a merciless machine, pounding and pounding and pounding. Joel’s naked body was slammed back and forth with the intensity of it. His hard dick bobbed up and down. His balls swung back and forth. He was making wild, ecstatic sounds inside his hood, muffled sounds of debased, mortifying, wailing lust. His cock was purple and red and hard, swinging back and forth like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, ready to burst, to spray a gusher of cum all over the bed. David was still clothed, even wearing his boots and jacket. Only Ellie and Joel were naked. Clothes were for people. Livestock didn’t get clothes. Ellie and Joel were for breeding now. She knew she would be next. After David finished with Joel, after he made the naked, bound man shoot his load everywhere, it would be Ellie’s turn.

“It’s going in your ass too, same as his,” David said, reading her mind, a vile grin on his sweaty face. “Figure I’ll just stack you up on top of him and fuck you that way. I want him to feel it when I make you come, Ellie.”

Ellie was almost there. Her legs were shaking. She couldn’t stand up much longer. She was working her pussy frantically with both hands, watching Joel, watching him take that big cock in his ass, thrust after thrust, until finally he bellowed like a broken, tamed animal and thick, white jets erupted from him, spraying all over the bed. Ellie came too, climaxing harder than she ever had before. She cried out. Joel heard her. It was too much. He shuddered, panted, went limp. But he couldn’t lay down. His sweaty, exhausted body was held in place by the ropes.

“C’mon, Ellie,” David said, patting Joel’s slick, shiny rump. “Get on up here. It’s your turn.”

“All right,” she nodded, and stepped towards the men, ready to mount Joel, ready to be mounted by David.

“Up and over, yeah?” Joel said, his fingers interlaced, his back to the tall chain link fence.

She placed her foot in his hands, trusting him to get her to the top in one smooth attempt. Joel was strong again. His wound had healed nicely. With Doctor Ellie’s permission, he did sit ups and pushups every day now. She exercised right alongside him, of course, though she couldn’t manage as many reps as he could, and she did her pushups girly-style, on her knees, which she insisted was the most badass way to do them.

“I’m ready,” she said and he sent her skyward with powerful muscles. She loved how strong he was. She scrambled over the top of the fence and dropped down into the enclosure of the fenced-in parking lot of the farm supply store.

The neatly mowed green grass was warm and soft beneath her naked feet when she landed.

She was nude. All the girls here were nude. Girls didn’t get clothes. They didn’t need them. Girls were meant to be looked at. Clothes just got in the way of that.

“What are you doing?” Melody asked. Her hair was blonde, and she had always denied bleaching it, but the chestnut hair between her legs told a different story. “Why didn’t you get away? Why did you come back?”

“Didn’t know where else to go,” Ellie shrugged. Unlike Melody, her hair color was natural. Everyone here could see it. Cherry Jackson was here, on the other side of the corral. She was a natural redhead too. She nodded to Ellie. The girl nodded back. True redheads were rare. They had to stick together.

“Found our missing heifer,” one of the guards said from the catwalk overhead. He spoke into a radio. He was wearing the black uniform and body armor of a soldier. All the men on the catwalk were soldiers. Women couldn’t be soldiers. Women didn’t deserve to be anything more than what they are: beautiful livestock.

“She didn’t get away?” the voice on the other end of the radio asked.

“Nah,” the solider said. “She’s too dumb to do anything that smart.”

“Well, that’s cause she’s don’t got a dick,” the radio replied.

The soldier laughed. Ellie sighed. She knew he was right. She was just a girl. She was stupid. All livestock was stupid.

Ellie milled about in the sun, naked, easily getting lost among all the other nude women and girls. She recognized many of them. Riley was there. They tried to talk to each other but were told to shut up by one of the handlers on the walkway overhead. They didn’t dare talk after that. They just stood in the sun, milling around with the other girls. Meat wasn’t allowed to talk. Only people got to talk. Girls weren’t people.

Every so often, a girl or woman was separated from the herd and taken away to be processed. Ellie watched them go, one at a time. None of the other livestock seemed to take notice of this except her. She sighed. She had always been too smart for her own good. Life would have been a lot easier for her if she’d been born dumb, like all the other ones.

Eventually Ellie felt the poke of a handler’s pole. She was herded inside the door, guided along by a man on the catwalk until she was safely inside the structure and the door closed behind her. A man in a long rubber apron and face shield motioned her over. She plodded to him. He held a garden hose in his hands. She was sprayed clean with cold water and hung from a Y-shaped metal apparatus that descended from an overhead track, one prong of the Y passing under each armpit. She was lifted off the ground and the height of the harness was adjusted until her toes were a good six inches above the floor. The metal device moved along its track in the ceiling, taking her through a hole in the wall and on to the next station. The man there had a giant electric knife. He sliced her legs off at the upper thigh, first the left, then the right. It didn’t hurt. She didn’t bleed. She watched the legs fall away with a mild interest. They lay there below her and she thought that she’d had nice legs. Strong and toned, and not a bad length. Shapely. She was going to miss those legs. A young boy gathered the limbs up, one at a time, and tossed them into a large metal roll-around bin, filled with other legs. She read the label on the bin. She wasn’t supposed to know how to read. Girls weren’t supposed to be taught such things. But Ellie knew how. Her mom had shown her how in secret, back before her mom had been taken inside this same building, years and years ago.

         DRUMSTICKS & THIGHS

“Prime cut,” the boy said to the older man with the knife.

“Yep,” said the man. He patted Ellie’s firm ass admiringly, two ripe curves rippled over the empty air where legs had been hanging just a minute ago. “This one’s had a lot of exercise. Not a lot of fat in this meat. Good and lean. Always a market for lean meat.”

The device she was suspended from rattled back into life, carrying her on to the next station down the line. She swung more noticeably, being much lighter now. When the machine clanked to a stop again, she felt like a yo-yo, swinging back and forth in one of those cool tricks that she’d always meant to learn how to do but never got around to for some reason or other. It was her own fault, really. Livestock had lots of time to play.

The man at this station had to reach out and steady her.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Shh,” he replied, not unkindly. “Meat doesn’t talk.”

He had an electric knife too. He used it to remove her arms, closer to the shoulder than the elbow, one at a time. She watched as he cut them away, saw how they tumbled to the floor. No blood. No pain. Another boy was there. He looked like the older man. She wondered if the man with the knife was the father of the boy. He watched with obvious pride as the boy quickly and efficiently gathered up her discarded arms. The one with the bite mark he tossed into the bin marked ‘grind for animal feed’. The other, unmarred arm he tossed into the bin with all the other arms. It didn’t hurt, but it felt strange to have no limbs at all. She thought that she was going to miss her arms more than her legs, but it might have been to early to say with certainty. Things were to be different now, she was sure of that much. The overhead mechanism jerked back into life and she was carried on down the line. She passed a long line of machines and butchers in leather aprons, processing the haul that had been collected today. Each cut of meat was efficiently removed from the bone. Some of the meat was processed into strips, other cuts were ground into giant mounds of soft meat, still other cuts were dumped into giant vats to be boiled. Some of the processed meat was placed into little white styrofoam trays and wrapped neatly with plastic film. Some was packed into cans and cooked under pressure, where it would remain edible for years to come. Some of it was placed on giant racks to be seasoned and grilled and served up hot and fresh to the men working in the factory. They worked hard here. They deserved a good meal. She thought she recognized one of the thighs rolling along on a conveyor belt towards a deboner/shredder. She was almost certain that it was one of hers. Her left thigh. The machine carried her along, around the last corner of the track. She bounced and sways in the straps and arms of the metal cradle holding her secure under her armpits. She was very light now and swung back and forth in a way that was almost comforting, like she was being rocked gently by the mother that had been taken from her too young. She wondered how much she weighed now. No more than half of what she did before; probably even less than that. A man waited at the end of the line. There was no boy here. He worked alone. Such a solitary post. He probably never had any children, she realized. She felt a little sad for him. This must be lonely work. He reached out to her with big strong hands. They felt good on her body; she felt safe as he held her firm and lifted her from the hooks that had carried her all this way. His thumbs were tantalizingly close to her breasts and she tried not to blush. She hadn’t really felt naked until this moment, even though all of her increasingly diminishing body had been on display since the start. He could see all of her – all that was left of her, anyway. He laid her on the cutting table and took up his electric knife. With a quick slice, her head came away from her body and rolled away, dangerously close to the edge. She had a good view of the rest of the procedure now. He carved her torso in half, separating the tasty haunches and loins from the breasts and chops. The organ meats he scooped out would be turned into sausage. It went into a bin for now. Nothing would go to waste except the head. It was a girl’s head. There was nothing in there of use to anyone. He picked up all that was left of her in his gloved hands. She felt like a bowling ball.

“See ya,” she said, getting a wan smile from him. His was a lonely job. She wanted to brighten his day a little.

“See ya,” he said.

He turned at the waist and dropped her head down the chute marked ‘Scrap – Disposal’. She disappeared into the darkness, rolling and tumbling easily along the cold metal of the slide, giggling all the way into the blackness. It was like an amusement park. Or the closest meat like her would ever get to such a place. Meat didn’t get to have fun. Meat was just for food.

Her little red head tumbled and tumbled down the chute. The stomach she no longer had began to do flip-flops.

“Fuck!” she hissed. “Gonna spew!”

She vomited into the snow, a thick yellow-orange spray that stained the pristine surface.

She coughed, hacked, and spit the last traces of it out of her mouth.

“Guh!” she wheezed.

“You don’t have to watch this, Ellie,” Joel said. “Maybe it’s too much. It’s okay if you want to go back to camp. You can get the fire started for me while I finish this up.”

“No,” Ellie grumbled, on one knee, fumbling around in her pack for her water bottle. “No, I need to know how to do this.”

She stood, turned, faced Joel where he knelt in the snow, big kitchen knife in hand. The dead deer lay on it’s back, all four limbs spread wide and held in place by heavy twine tied around scrounged tent pegs hammered into the frozen ground. The deer’s belly was open, slit from ribcage to anus. The newly exposed organs inside were still warm enough to steam in the cold air. Joel was ready to start pulling the entrails out. He’d said it would have been better if they’d had a good rope to hand the animal from a tree branch.

_If we had a rope, we could just place a big trashcan under it and just let the organs fall out. That’s what he said._

_That made me puke for some reason._

“Bigger job than a rabbit,” she said. “I’m pretty good with those. But I’ve never… gutted a deer before. ‘Bout time I learn how, right?”

“You don’t have to, Ellie,” he said, putting the knife aside. A large pair of leather gloves was tucked into his belt.

“Yes, I do,” she said flatly. She’d scrounged up a pair of seagreen dishwashing gloves just for work like this. She tugged them out of her jacket pocket and worked them onto her hands. She held her gloved hands up for him to see, waggled her fingers. “Ready to work, boss.”

Joel smirked at the sight of her rubber gloves. “You plannin’ on washin’ dishes tonight?”

The water was hot and soapy. The suds were a thick layer floating on top.

“Ooh! Hot!” she squeaked.

“Get in there, girl,” Dad said. “You need a bath.”

She grinned, trying not to wince as she sank her other foot into the steaming water hiding under the foam. She stood in the tub. She was naked. She was adopted too. Just nine years old, but her years spent at the orphanage had seemed like a lifetime. Her new dad leaned against the edge of the long countertop. The mirror behind him was steamed up. He crossed his arms. He wore a sweater and khaki slacks.

_Isn't he hot wearing that stuff in here? But that's just how grownups dress, I guess._

“You don’t have to stand there and watch,” she said with a roll of her eyes. A week she’d lived with her new dad, and he always watched her bathe.

_Is that weird? I don’t know._

_I’m glad he does it though. But I don’t know why. I just like him being in here with me for some reason._

She blushed and stirred the foamy water with her foot. She looked at the soap and washcloth waiting for her in the little tray built into the side of the tiled wall.

“Gotta make sure you actually take a bath,” he said in his slow, deep, drawling voice.

_I love how he talks._

“The nuns told me how you are. They said they practically had to carry you into the bathroom and hold you down in the tub to get you cleaned up.”

“I’m a cat,” she grinned.

“You’re a dirty cat,” he chuckled. “Sit down. Get your butt in the tub, girl.”

“Okay, Daddy,” she giggled and eased herself down into the waiting water. She gasped as her butt was swallowed up in the hot foam. She hissed. “Shit!”

“Cussin’ will get you a paddlin’,” he warned.

“Everything gets me a paddling here,” she groused cutely, stretching out her legs, leaning back, letting the hot water have everything below the waist.

_Not that I’m complaining._

_Is that weird? I like that he sets rules. It’s his house. And Sister Anne always said I deserved every spanking she ever gave me._

_But it’s different when he does it._

_Really, really different._

“Shit,” she groaned again, trying not to smile too wickedly.

“That’s it,” he said firmly. “You’re gettin’ a spankin’ before bedtime tonight, girl.”

“Awww,” she whined, feigning regret perfectly. “Daddy! C’mon! Please don’t spank me! Not again!”

“Five licks,” he said, lovingly but without sympathy. “I swear, I’m gonna tuck you in with a butt that’s on fire if you keep this up.”

“Damn it,” she whispered, leaning back ever more, resting her back against the tub, submerged to the shoulders. She lifted one leg, bent the knee, rested her foot against the edge.

“Ten licks,” he said.

“I’ll be good, Daddy,” she exhaled dreamily, enjoying the hot water now. “I promise.”

“I know you will,” her dad said. “That’s why I keep spankin’ you. Gotta keep you on the straight and narrow.”

She giggled. Minutes passed. Eventually she sat up and worked the soap into the washcloth. He watched approvingly as she bathed.

“Doin’ good so far,” he nodded.

“Will you wash my hair in a minute, Daddy?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

_That’s my favorite part of bathtime, when you kneel by the tub and wash my hair and my back and stuff. I like how your hands feel. Did you know that, Daddy? Am I weird?_

“Sure,” he said. “Happy to.”

“Thanks,” she grinned, washing her face, hiding her blushing cheeks behind the soapy cloth. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, darlin’.”

Her heart raced. She bit her lower lip to keep her smile from getting too large.

“Wash behind your ears,” he advised.

“I will,” she said, and quickly did so.

Outside, thunder rumbled. A storm was coming. Fire and smoke and blood were going to rain down from the sky tonight.

_Doesn’t matter. I’m safe in this house with my Dad. He won’t let anything happen to me._

She ran the soapy washcloth around her chest, under her arms, over her ribs, trying to get the places on her back that she could reach.

_But not too much. I need to leave something for him to wash._

Thunder rumbled again.

“Storm’s comin’,” he remarked.

“Yep.”

She grinned and dared herself to ask another favor of him.

“I get r-really scared of storms and stuff,” she said, her voice wavering with excitement. “Umm… C-can I sleep with you tonight, Daddy?”

“Sure,” he said, sounding just a little excited by the prospect. Or was she just imaging that?

“Awesome,” she grinned, looking at him, lifting her leg higher out of the tub, washing her thigh and calf and the back of her knee. “You’re the best, Dad.”

“Yes, I am,” he grinned and winked, making her giggle again. “But thank you for noticin’.”

“Thank you for bringing me home from the orphanage,” she said sincerely, smiling sweetly. She loved him. She loved him so very much. She lifted her other leg out and his eyes flashed quickly to the wet, glistening skin of her inner thigh before coming back to meet her eyes. Her stomach fluttered. She blushed again. She looked down at the foam around her, shyly.

_Why do I like him looking at me so much?_

“You needed a home, girl,” he said warmly. “I needed you in my life. It all just sorta worked out, I reckon.”

“I’m going to be the best daughter ever,” she nodded earnestly.

“I know you will,” he said. She could hear the love in his voice.

She washed her arms, hands, fingers, grinning happily, loved and cherished.

_Home._

_Family._

She exhaled contentedly, stretching, arching her back, unashamed. Water ran down her flesh in little streams, making waterfalls along the length of her outstretched arms. He watched her with dark, protective eyes.

She eased onto her side, reached back to wash her behind. She was turned away from him. It was better this way. She suddenly felt too shy to see his face.

“Am I r-really getting ten swats tonight?” she asked over her shoulder, eyes lowered, her voice trembling and nervous, just like her submerged belly.

“Damn right,” he said. “Got to stop you from cussin’.”

“But you cuss,” she answered impishly, sitting on her butt again, looking at him from the corner of her demurred eyes. She wanted to gather the foam up around her, hide her naked torso behind it, but she wasn’t sure why. Didn’t all dads share bathtime with their daughters, adopted or otherwise? She didn’t know, but she liked that he spent this time with her.

_I don’t want it to stop. Not ever._

“I’m the dad,” he answered. “I can cuss as much as I want. And that’s five more licks for sassin’ me.”

“Five more? That’s _fifteen_ now!” she whined.

“Ten more on top of that, if you don’t stop the sass,” he smirked.

“I don’t even know what sass is!” she laughed, hiding her face in her hands, embarrassed and excited and still not sure why. “You use all these words nobody outside of Texas has ever heard before! It’s not fair! You’re so mean, Daddy!”

“Wellllll…. I reckon I can be… sometimes,” he chuckled. “But you’ll thank me for it one of these days.”

She soaped up her toes. “Maybe I’ll just stay in this tub all night where you can’t get to me.”

“Oh, I’ll get in there with you if I have to, girl.”

Her breath caught in her throat with a happy snorting-peeping sound.

“ _Daaaaaddyyy!_ ” she protested, thrilled and confused, heart pounding.

“Up to you,” he shrugged with a smile. “But if you make me come in there after you, your butt’s gonna regret it.”

She cackled, covered herself with both arms and scooted down, her butt sliding along the bottom of the tub with a long, sustained, vibrating squeak. She did her best to hide under the water. All of her body fit under the foam except her knees, which stuck up like little islands as she hid. After a half-minute that felt somehow like both an eternity and a heartbeat, she sat back up, inhaling deeply. More peals of laughter poured out of her. Foam and water ran down her face, half-hidden behind glossy ribbons of auburn hair.

“After you’re done havin’ a swim, Little Mermaid, we’ll eat some dinner,” Dad said.

“‘Kay,” she grinned.

“Not hungry?” Joel asked, shoving a forkful of venison into his mouth. The day was getting late. The shadows were long now. It would be time for bed very soon.

“Not really,” she said, disinterested, poking at her lunch with a plastic spork. She wouldn’t say why. He wouldn’t understand. Joel had never been meat for anyone.

“Water’s hot,” he said idly, glancing at the large pot of water simmering and steaming over the firepit. “Be good to be clean again.”

“Yeah.”

It was no longer evening. It was early morning. She didn’t remember when the sun had come up. The days were blurring together. Everything was getting mixed up in her head. Every plate and pot they had was dirty. They were downstairs, in the janitor’s closet, washing their cookware in a big mop sink filled with hot, sudsy water that they had boiled outside in the snow. There was not a lot of room in there. They stood close together. She splashed him with foam, flicking it from her fingers like a magic spell, making dark spots on his green thermal underwear. Lately, whenever they decided to stay inside the whole day, all they wore was their long underwear. She liked how he looked in them. They hugged his body nicely, showing all his muscles. Boys had never been of much interest to Ellie Williams. But Joel was different. Different in every way that counted. He was patient, usually. Kind, most of the time. Gentle, when it mattered. He had been gentle with her since he’d found her in the burning steakhouse, rarely pressuring her, supporting her instead. She loved him for it. She wanted to be better, back to who she had been before, so he could go back to being a butthead sometimes, being a dick sometimes, just like she liked, when she was in the mood for it, of course. She was trying as hard as she could today to be normal again.

“Prismatic spray!” she said, casting a spell she kinda sorta remembered from the old Dungeons & Dragons books she’d found back at the military school, the super dorky ones that Riley had teased her about.

“You little brat,” Joel laughed, bringing up a foamy hand towards her face. One finger was extended. Thick white dollops of bubbly suds dripped from it as he reached for her nose.

“Ah! No!” she shrieked in delight, backed into the corner, trapped, unable to squeeze around him and run for the door. Trapped. Helpless. At his mercy. Mostly because she didn’t even try. “Don’t touch me with that! I don’t know where that finger’s been!”

Joel laughed and waggled his wet finger closer to her cheek. She squealed and recoiled from it, pushing at his hard, sexy chest with her wet, flailing hands. Suds ran down her cheek. She loved how he felt under her fingers, broad muscles flexing and working as he held her in place. She giggled and shrieked and didn’t see that this was turning him on, just a little. Tight green underwear couldn’t hide that sort of thing.

“No touching,” she said. “That wasn’t the deal.”

“I just want to feel how soft it is.”

“No way,” she said, feeling her hands shape themselves into fists. She made sure to keep them down by her hips. Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t punch the creepy asshole in the face. “We had a deal. I’d let you look. That’s all. So go ahead. Look. There it is.”

“At least open your legs a little more.”

She sighed and forced herself to keep her hands in place by her naked hips. Her pants and underwear were wadded up around her ankles as she leaned against the hard edge of the bathroom counter.

“Hop up there, alright?” he asked, patting the countertop with the flat of his palm.

“What the fuck for?” she asked.

“Have a seat. That way I can see it better.”

“Oh, fine. If that’s what it’ll take to get this over with.”

She was short. She had to jump up to get her butt onto the cold countertop. She scooted back; her bottom was perched over the basin of the sink.

“That’s a good girl,” he said in his high, raspy voice, inching closer on his knees to see better.

Her feet dangled well above the floor. She wanted to kick him. Instead she opened her legs just a little wider.

“There it is,” she grumped. “That’s all the cooch I’ve brought with me today. Satisfied?”

“C’mon,” he whined. “Lemme touch it. Just a little.”

“Nope.”

“Damn it,” he muttered. “It’s just so damn pretty. You know?”

“If you say so,” she said.

“It is. Prettiest one I ever seen, and that’s no lie.”

“Gross. What does that even mean? I… What? Do you look at a lot of these things?”

“Every chance I get,” he whispered, entranced by what she was showing him. It was weird how hypnotized he seemed to be. She didn’t quite see what was so special about it – either hers or anyone else’s. Girl parts were all the same. Every girl had them, right? Boys were so fucking weird.

The ceramic ring of the sink’s edge was cold underneath her bare bottom. She wiggled in place, her legs wide open, her butt hanging in the empty air of the sink’s bowl, a faucet poking into the small of her back. She couldn’t get comfortable.

“Don’t move,” he said. “I’m still looking. Keep still.”

“Easy for you to say,” she grumbled. “You’re not the one trying to sit like this. And how much longer do you plan to stare? You’ve seen pretty much all there is to see, don’t you think?”

“Hold it open for me,” he said, the idea occurring to him suddenly.

“What?” she squawked. “No way!”

“Do it,” he urged. “Hold it open. I can’t see anything with it like this. I want to see all of it. Lemme see inside.”

“You can see plenty, buddy! I’m not doing that!”

“Open it up for me and I’ll give you two bottles.”

She said nothing. Her silence told him she was considering his offer.

“Three,” he said, looking up at her from where he was kneeling on the bathroom floor. This was the first time he had actually looked her in the face since she had pulled her pants down and spread her legs. “Three bottles of medicine if you show me _everything_.”

Everything about this creepy old man skeeved her out. His hair was unkempt. His beard was tangled. His breath smelled like rotten meat. But he had the antibiotics she needed. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t behaved himself so far. All he wanted to do was look. No harm in looking, right? It was just the two of them in this old house. No one would ever know. She would get the medicine and then she could go back to Joel and pretend this stuff had never happened.

With a deep sigh, she relented. She leaned back against the mirror and tugged her favorite red t-shirt up her belly, away from her naked crotch, and wadded it in place beneath her bra. She reached down her stomach, feeling her way past auburn curls, until her fingers found their place. She remembered the Bed and Breakfast, sitting on the edge of the sink, her pubic hair shaved off after a day spent pestering Joel to help her with the experiment. Joel had been on his knees, between her open legs. He had washed her doubly bare flesh clean. Then he had held a mirror for her to see. She had never seen her own twat before. Not from that angle, anyway. And certainly not all hairless and smooth like that. Then Joel had put the mirror away and placed his mouth on her baby smooth sex. It was the first time he’d gone down on her and it had been heavenly. This was not. This was uncomfortable and embarrassing. But it was necessary too. She sighed silently and parted her outer labia like curtains revealing a stage. The show must go on.

“Ohhh… There you go,” the creep whispered. “That’s real nice. Mmm-mm. Beautiful, that’s what it is.”

“If you say so,” she mumbled, mortified. She’d do anything for Joel. Anything in the world. Anything except ever tell him that she had done this, of course.

“Don’t by shy about it. C’mon now. Spread those sweet lips of yours wide. Real wide,” he said, transfixed, excited. “And lean back more. I want to see all of what you got there. I want to see _everything_.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. She didn’t want to do it, but she had to, so she did, pulling the skin tightly, spreading it, holding her twat as open as far it would comfortably go, which she was surprised to learn was quite a bit as it turned out. She showed all the boys what they had paid Riley so much to see. “Take a good look, jerks.”

“Oh wow,” said one. “You can see _everything_.”

“It’s so… pink,” said another.

“Of course it is. You paid to see some pink, kids,” The other girl in this room said coolly. “And Riley Abel _always_ delivers.”

Ellie shot her friend a dirty look. The older girl stood beside the closed door of the bathroom, guarding it, making sure nobody came in. Nobody who didn’t pay to see the show, naturally. This was the second floor, where all the freshmen boys lived. They were just getting interested in girls and Riley knew a lucrative market when she saw one.

“Is… is that where…” began one boy, tentatively, never taking his eyes of it. “Is that where you stick it in?”

“Tell him, Ellie.” Riley’s tone was both mean and playful.

Ellie sighed, trying hard to be a good sport about this. She always got her share of the loot, so long as she put on a good show. If she didn’t do a good job, she wouldn’t get anything, which hardly seemed fair, but Riley made the rules. Riley was the boss. Ellie just showed the goods.

“It’s not where _you_ get to stick it in, kid,” she said in a pleasantly brittle voice, talking mostly through her teeth. “But, yeah, that’s where it goes in.”

“And what’s that one up there? That little hole?” Yet another boy asked, peering, studying. How many boys were in the bathroom-turned-peepshow this time? A dozen? Twenty? More? It was the biggest audience she and Riley had ever had. Word had spread since they’d started putting on this secret show. All the dorms were talking about it. Ellie was something of a celebrity now, especially among the younger boys in the school.

“Good question, kid. What is that little hole for, Ellie?” Riley asked, teasing.

“That’s…” Ellie began icily, keeping her smile in place. “That’s where I pee from. Okay?”

“Really? Cool!”

“I wanna see her pee!” one of the boys said.

“Me too!” said another. “She can pee in the sink. She’s sitting right there!”

“Hey, yeah! It won’t make a mess!”

“Tell her to pee, Riley!”

“Yeah! Do it!”

“I don’t know, boys… That kind of stuff costs extra,” Riley said, rubbing her knuckles on her blue uniform, polishing them for inspection. She blew on them for good measure, cool as hell, just like always.

“Riley!” Ellie hissed. This was going too far. They’d put on this show in at least one bathroom in each of the three dormitories and a few of the classrooms too. It was a peepshow, sure, but it wasn’t supposed to be anything more than that. What these boys wanted was simply too much.

“How much extra?” someone asked.

“Another packet of M&Ms. Or a wine cooler,” Riley answered.

One of the boys ran out of the bathroom at a full sprint.

“Rileeeeey!” Ellie lamented plaintively. She didn’t want to do this. Or maybe she just wanted to put up a fight first. She reached out to Riley with open hands, imploring.

“Hey! Make her hold it open again, Riley!” a boy shouted.

“Yeah!” said another. “We can’t see!”

“I wasn’t done looking!”

Exhaling heavily, Ellie did it without being told. The withering look she received from Riley was more than enough motivation. She opened herself, parting the curtains of her little stage once more. “There. Happy?”

“Wow.”

“It’s so… complicated in there.”

“I thought it would just be… y’know… a hole. Not like this.”

“It’s cool though, huh?”

“Sure is.”

“The show must go on,” Ellie muttered.

“What’s that thing? Up there.” the youngest boy asked, his finger pointing but not touching. Touching would bring on the mother of all beatings. Riley had made that rule very clear before the show had started.

“That’s her clit, dummy,” one of them said. “It’s what girls have instead of a boner.”

“Why’s it sticking out like that? It wasn’t doing that a minute ago.”

“Good question, Ellie,” Riley said. “Why is it sticking out like that? Gosh! What’s going on in there? Are you okay?”

Ellie said nothing. She looked away, red faced, embarrassed.

“Oh! Look, boys!” Riley teased, “I think it’s getting wet in there too! See how shiny it’s getting. Like dewdrops.”

“Hey! She’s right!”

“It’s so puffy now!”

“Look! It’s sorta changing color!”

“Why is it getting all wet like that? Is she sweating or something?”

Riley laughed. “Oh, yeah. My girl’s getting hot. That’s for sure.”

Ellie wanted to fix Riley with a stare that would make her cruel friend explode into chunky bits of greedy smugness but she didn’t dare. At least twenty boys were all clustered around the sink where she was sitting, all of them staring intently at her pussy, held open for all to see by her two shaking hands. The only person in the room staring at Ellie’s face was Riley, and the younger girl didn’t have the courage to meet those dark, smoldering eyes. Her own green irises were open wide, another uncontrollable sign of her rising arousal. She didn’t want Riley to see how much she was enjoying this degradation. Riley knew, of course, but Ellie had to hang on to whatever scraps of dignity she still had, even if they were only imaginary at this point.

A single drop of moisture dangled from her taut pink folds, wobbled there for a long, humiliating moment, before falling into the sink with an audible plop. Ellie swallowed loudly. Her dignity was gone now. Officially. Everyone knew she was a dirty, shameless girl now.

All the boys gasped. Riley chuckled.

“Did you see that?”

“Is that pee? Or sweat? Or what?”

The boy who had left earlier returned. He handed Riley a yellow packet of peanut M&Ms.

“Here,” Ellie heard the kid say. “Now make her do it, Riley. We wanna see what it looks like when a girl pees.”

“Riley,” Ellie whispered, begging, scared, her slick fingers trembling, trying to hold her swollen, dripping pussy open for the eager young audience that had paid to see it.

“What can I tell you? Little man met my price, Boo,” Riley shrugged. “Gotta give the audience what they paid for. Try to keep it all in the sink okay? You let that thing get out of control and spray the audience and I’ll have to charge ‘em extra.”

The boys laughed, excited, nervous, anticipating. They leaned in close, crowding around her, pushing over one another. She could feel the heat from their bodies on her belly and inner thighs.

“riley” she whispered, defeated, insecure.

Riley said nothing. She just pointed to the sink basin waiting beneath Ellie’s pussy.

Ellie trembled. Her breaths came in short, quick gulps. She had to do it. She didn’t want them to see. They were just a bunch of stupid boys. They shouldn’t see this. She shouldn’t do it. But she couldn’t stop it. She didn’t want to let them see. She didn’t want them to look away. She didn’t want to stop. She couldn’t stop.

“Holy cow!”

“Look!”

“She’s really doing it!”

“Mmmmffff!” she grunted, humiliated, obeying, performing, showing, spraying, climaxing.

Ellie shivered. She was wet from head to toe. The bathroom was cold. She’d been in here too long. In a few minutes, Joel was going to tap on the door and ask her if she had fallen in or something. She tried to breathe normally. She tried not to make a sound. She dabbed at her dribbling twat with a wad of toilet paper. She’d woken up to a dirty dream that morning and it had been tugging at the corners of her mind ever since.

“I’m fucking lucky I didn’t piss the bed before I woke up,” she grumbled quietly, standing up, pulling her panties back into place.

She poured the last bucket of her sponge bath into the toilet, the dirty water flushing her piss away. She wished her shame would disappear with it. She toweled off and tried not to think about the places her mind had been going to lately. It was no use.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” she mumbled, stepping into her thermal bottoms one leg at a time, tugging them up around her hips. She pulled the matching top down over her head and wiggled her arms through the sleeves. She dragged her wet hair through the collar, and let it plaster itself to her back and face. She didn’t care. She wanted out of this bathroom. She could comb it later. Or not. Didn’t matter. “I’m horny all the time now and all my dreams are gross and weird.”

A vivid flash of a green forest. Squatting down in the tall grass, in the shade of a tall tree. The red helmet was on her head. Pistol in one hand. Giant roll of toiler paper in the other. A full bladder. Joel was on the Honda, somewhere faraway, down the hill, at the edge of the road. A truck was coming. A truck full of soldiers. He was going to leave her alone. He’d drive away and she’d be left on the side of the road. No one would ever find her. No one would ever care. She blinked, and the memory was gone. She stepped out of the bathroom, back into the big room she shared with Joel. Her pussy was still throbbing. It wanted more of her fingers. It needed to come again. Once was not enough. She was starting to hate her pussy. It didn’t feel like it was even attached to her some days. It was a thing she was carrying around for some other girl, a happy girl who used to be here but she was gone now and only this sad girl remained.

“Hey,” Joel said, looking up from the game of Chinese checkers they were about to start. “There you are. Startin’ to wonder if you had snuck out the window or something.”

“Thought you got rid of me, didn’t you?” she smiled, trying to be friendly and happy like the vanished girl, the one who had left her the burden of the horny, annoying twat stuffed between her legs, like an unruly pet to look after.

“I was hopin’, yeah,” he said, making room for her to sit down by him at the long coffee table. “For your sake. Because this gonna one terrible butt whuppin’ you’re about to get.”

“Pfft. I am the queen of Chinese checkers,” she snorted. “You’ll see. Finding that game is the worst mistake you ever made, you cocky butt head.”

“You can’t even see the board, squirt.”

He stretched out his hand and pushed her wet hair away from her face, combing it with his fingers. She smiled. It was such a sweet, gentle thing to do. She remembered when she was afraid of his hands, afraid of him.

“I used to be kind of scared of you,” she said softly.

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? When was this?”

“When we first met. A little bit. And then I got really scared when we found the Honda. Remember? You were yelling at me because I almost blasted you in the face with that really cool shotgun.”

“I was just upset. That’s all. I wouldn’t hurt you,” Joel said in a voice low and deep, his tone reassuring. “You know that, Ellie.”

“I know.”

He rubbed the back of his hand against her cheek. She could feel the ridges of his knuckles. The thought of him striking her with that hand flashed through her mind.

_Slap me._

_Smack my face._

_Hit me. Right in my fucking face. Punch me, Joel._

He smiled at her, warmly, lovingly. She smiled back, innocently, fraudulently.

_Beat me up. I want you to. Throw me to the floor. I don’t deserve a bed. Make me eat my meals down there from now on. Make me sleep under the bed like a dog. Tear my clothes off. Call me a whore. Smack me in the mouth and make me suck your dick with my lips all swollen up and stuff. Make me go naked like you did at that shack by the pond. Hurt me. Fucking hurt me, Joel. Please. I don’t know why I need it so bad, but I do. I really do. I don’t know where this is coming from but I want you to be mean to me. Hurt me. Fuck me so hard it hurts me. Fuck me! Right in my ass! Or take your belt to my ass. Hit me with it as hard as you can. Or fuck me. Or both at the same time. I don’t care. Just make me cry. Make me cry and make me beg and make me promise to never do it again… whatever the fuck it was that I did. Just make me promise to be good. Punish me for something. Anything. Please. Please. _

“We’ll get in a game or two. Then we need to make some more candles before it gets dark. Sound good?” he asked, giving her shoulder a soft, friendly squeeze.

“Sounds good,” she replied with a smile, keeping so much inside that she was sure he could see the seams of her soul beginning to split apart.

It couldn’t hold up under the abuse. It cracked and buckled, giving way at last. The door hung from a single hinge now, battered and broken by tremendous effort.

“Solid oak,” he huffed, his voice filtered by his gas mask. He rubbed his aching, bruised shoulder. “Jesus. I was about to give up on it, and that’s a fact.”

“I got tired just watching you do that,” she said. She wasn’t wearing a mask. She didn’t own one. She didn’t need one. “I hope there’s something really good in here.”

“Me too. But there’s spores.” He handed her his Colt automatic, which she took in both hands. She had only three bullets left for her compact Beretta. If there was trouble, he wanted her to be prepared. “There’s not too many floatin’ around. Figure the cold killed most of whatever’s in here, but keep your eyes open all the same, kiddo.”

But she couldn’t. It was impossible to keep your eyes open when you were kissing. She didn’t even know why she had started this. They had been eating dessert. Smoked venison and herbal tea as the main course, then dessert: the good stuff they’d found on that day’s scavenging hunt. They had been sharing a can of Lucky Leaf Vanilla Pudding when she’d practically thrown herself at him. No warning. No reason she that could remember. She’d just had to have him and she couldn’t wait another second. She was in his arms. She could taste the sweet, creamy vanilla, in his mouth and hers. The floor of the office had never felt so soft and inviting. Joel lay back, pulling her down with him. She was half on the floor and half on the man. One leg was draped across him. She could feel him getting hard. It was amazing and perfect and awesome feeling him like this, knowing for certain now that he was all better and that this was the proof because boners didn’t lie about this kind of stuff, and when he tugged her leg, pulling her hips along, making her lie on top of him, it got even better. It’d been months since they’d kissed. Literally months. The last time was the night before they’d finally made it to the university, the night before Joel almost died, the last night before everything went to hell and she’d had to be in charge of everything instead of being the sidekick. She didn’t want to be the boss. She never had. Let Riley be the boss. Let Joel be the boss. She needed a boss. How could she be bossed around the way she secretly liked to be if she didn’t have a boss?

It came back to her in a moment of clarity.

_We were talking about when this winter might end and what month it might be. We worked it out. We decided it was probably February. And that means it’s my birthday. I’m fifteen now. I’m old enough. That’s why I jumped him. I didn’t want him to say another word. I’m tired of waiting. I didn’t want another excuse from him._

_I want to fuck._

_I’m ready to fuck._

“Joel,” she whispered when their lips parted briefly. She adjusted her position on top of him, trying to get in just the right spot. His hands slid across her ass, cupping her round cheeks, snug and shapely inside her tight thermals.

“Goddamn, you are sexy as hell in this long underwear,” Joel husked.

She snorted, laughing. He was adorable.

“Don’t be an asshole, dude,” she giggled. “I’m trying to seduce you. God, I’d put on my sexy purple lacey undies right now but I don’t want to freeze to death, you dick.”

“These blue ones are my favorite,” he insisted, his voice throaty and thick. He began kissing her neck. His beard felt even better than she remembered.

She had to work to remember how to make words. “You serious?”

“As a damn heart attack,” he rumbled, his teeth scraping her neck, drawing out primal feelings of submission from deep inside her. “These things are so damn tight on you. Shows off every sexy bit of your body… Till a fella can’t think about nothin’ ‘cept a girl and her curves.”

“Oh yeah?” Delighted. A little surprised. She had never expected to feel sexy in the silly things.

“Been driving me crazy all winter watchin’ you run around in this stuff.”

“Wow,” she moaned, her earlobe in his mouth, surrendering herself to him as fast as she could. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“‘Fraid you might stop wearin’ them if I did.”

She laughed and shivered. One of his hands was sliding along her back, tugging her blue top up, revealing her torso. The other hand was sliding down her ass, between her open legs, towards her pussy. She spread her thighs just a little more, tilted her hips, felt the carpet against her knees, pushed herself towards that questing hand. He found her. She groaned, her pussy covered, protected, owned by his hand.

_Fuck me, Joel. Hurry. Before something else goes wrong._

“Shouldn’t I keep wearing them then?” she giggle-moaned. “If you like them so much?”

He levered her up, his hands on her waist, lifting, maneuvering her effortlessly, until she was sitting astride him. She could feel his cock, hard and waiting, as he pulled her shirt off over her head, baring her breasts. Her lovely, loose red hair tumbled free as he tossed the top away. She leaned forward, just a little, splaying fingers across his firm stomach, luxuriating in the sensation of her small breasts safe inside his big hands. Her unbound hair was a curtain. Her white teeth flashed behind it, ringed by the plump, rosy fullness of her open mouth. She whispered his name again, so softly he had to read her lips.

He smiled and bounced her little breasts in his cupped palms, making her groan and smile. Her eyes were closed. She was far away.

_Fuck me, Joel._

“fuck me” he heard her say. Whispered. Groaned. Not meant to be said out loud.

He smiled. She didn’t realize that she’d let the words slip out.

“You’re such a tease, girl,” he drawled, sexy and self-assured, perfectly in command of himself, the girl, and the moment. “You ain’t worn a bra all winter, have you?”

She looked down, her eyes open, a little nervous, a little surprised.

_Am I a tease? I guess I am. That’s not a bad thing though, right?_

“Nope,” she exhaled slowly, eager to play this game with him, keeping her eyes locked on his, grinning, impish, cute, sexier than she knows, her stomach full of hot, dancing lights. “Hoping you’d eventually play with my boobs like this if I kept extending the invitation every day, you know? I figured, ‘sooner or later even a dumb cowboy like Joel has to get the message’, right?”

She winked, smiled, giving him her best bedroom eyes.

_I even made sure to get a wedgie going so I could flash you some butt canyon and a little camel toe this morning. I wonder if that’s what finally did the trick?_

_God, I am a tease!_

“It worked,” he growled, eliciting a flirty giggle from her. “Ain’t been able to take my eyes off these sweet little titties since we got to this town. Not for a damn minute.”

_I’ve missed your silly sweet sex talk. You don’t even know how much, dude._

“All part of my master plan,” she cooed, lifting her hands, slipping them over his, feeling the bones of his large knuckles against her palms, feeling his fingers move and flex as he explored the soft, tender shapes of her breasts. They were getting larger as he played with them, she could feel it. She wondered if he could feel it too.

_My boobs aren’t the only part of me that’s swelling up._

His thermals were black, top and bottom. She was naked above the waist, her skin pale from the long winter, peach and apricot and pink and freckled, glowing, luminous in her desire. Her legs were wrapped in electric blue and she squeezed her thighs against his hips. He pinched and tugged her little, tender nipples, tormenting her exquisitely.

“Harder,” she hissed.

_Hurt me. Please._

Her teeth clenched as he really began to work the pink pebbles between his fingers. “Ahhhh-nnnnn-mmmm.”

“Little tease. You like it rough, don’t you?”

_I want it. I deserve it._

“yesssss”

_I let you down. I let everybody down. I’m such a fuck up._

“Goddamn, I want you, girl.”

She shuddered as she felt his hands exploring her thighs, willing herself to be his prisoner. Her breasts missed him. Her thighs welcomed him.

“Want you so much,” he growled, slurred with lust, almost incoherent.

_This is it. I’m losing my virginity tonight!_

_Oh man, I’m scared._

His thick fingers traced the mouth of her pussy, hiding and smoldering beneath her bottoms, she hugged herself then began to play with her tits, tugging them like he had, abusing herself. He swatted the side of her ass and she gasped. Small hands pulled their owner’s breasts into aching cones. She squeaked, loving it. She felt larger, rougher hands slip in, taking her tits away from her. He tugged one taut and she wheezed words she couldn’t be sure that she had ever meant to say aloud.

“fuhhhk… smack my boobs, Joel.”

He did, lightly, swatting one of them with his fingertips.

_This is perfect. It’s all so fucking perfect._

_Just one thing more. I need it. I have to ask him for it._

“Sl-uh,” she began, but the word died incomplete.

_I have to. I need it. God help me, I need it so bad I’m gonna die without it._

She tried again.

“S-slap my face,” she moaned. Her voice was weak. Feeble. She was almost too afraid to say the words. “Slap me. Please.”

She winced, her eyes screwed shut as tightly as she could make them. She was humiliated by what she’d just said. She should have kept it to herself. He wouldn’t understand. She pulled her lips into her mouth, ashamed and feeling dumb. She was stupid and she wanted to cry.

_Why did I do that? Now he thinks I’m a frea-_

**slap!**

“Oh fuck!” she blurted, loud, almost climaxing from the blow. Her cheek stung. Her pussy surged with enough electricity to power every house in Jackson.

Joel growled, animal lust rising in him as he saw how well she reacted to the blow.

“A-again,” she whimpered, savoring the way her face burned.

**slap!**

“Oh God, Joel. Oh God” She couldn’t look at him. She was too embarrassed. She wanted to apologize. She opened her mouth to try and explain why she was so stupid and messed up in the head.

“again,” she gasped. Not what she had meant to say, but what she had wanted to.

He did.

**Slap!**

Hot tears welled up behind her closed eyes.

She groaned, arched her back, grunted something unintelligible.

**Slap!**

Her left breast unexpectedly exploded with a sudden discharge of energy as his hand struck, glancing it from the side, making it jiggle and ripple and throb as it danced about on her glistening chest.

“Fuck!” She heard her voice. High. Strained. She was excited by how she sounded to her own ears.

**slap!**

She hissed, gritted her teeth, a small amount spittle sprayed into the air. The other small breast now leapt about in a wild, undulating rhythm, set into motion by his cruel hand.

**slap! slap!**

“fuck! ow! my tits! jesus! ow! _my tits!_ ” She grunted, quivered, shook, mewled. She slumped, surrendered, waited for more abuse.

His hands were on her body, holding her as she trembled, trying to read her, decode her signals, understand her needs. She had to make it clear to him. She didn’t want to be comforted.

“again” she squeaked “hurry”

**slap!**

“fuck” She sat up. How could she expect him to really hurt her if she wouldn’t sit up straight? She couldn’t hide herself from him.

He held her tit by the pink knob at the front of it, lifting it just a bit, keeping it steady for what was to come.

**slap! slap!**

“joel”

The other one now, his fingers pinched, tugged, pulled it up and out by the nipple, made the soft, engorged flesh a target. She squeaked in fear and lust.

**slap! slap! slap!**

“dontstop”

Both of the small, swollen shapes burned with molten heat. They felt enormous, huge, heavy, as big as her head, with nipples the size of thimbles. She panted and trembled.

 **Slap! Slap!** **Slap! Slap!** Directly against them, not from the side this time, and not gently. His open palms came down hard and fast on her tits, slapping, paddling, making her sob and squirm. It was almost too much. She couldn’t believe it wasn’t already too much. They were twin volcanoes, erupting. She couldn’t get enough. She opened her mouth to speak.

 **Slap!** Her face. Right on her mouth. Not too hard, but hard enough. She inhaled sharply. Stunned.

 **Slap!** Her mouth and her cheek that time, and just a little of the tip of her nose. Her lips pulsed and throbbed and tingled. Her eyes flew open for a moment. She saw him down there, his features a mask of fierce, dangerous lust. Her lips were swollen. Her mouth made the words come out all funny.

“ohgodjoeliloveyouiloveyouloveyousomuch”

It was a rush of words. She couldn’t stop them. She didn’t want to let them out. There was too much that she’d been keeping inside, keeping to herself, keeping secret. She closed her eyes. She tried to look away. She made herself be quiet.

 ** _SLAP!_** Hard. Right on the side of her face. Hard enough to leave her fat mouth hanging open in shock. Her eyes were watering. She blinked, gaped in disbelief at what he had just done and how fucking hard he had done it. Her soft, swollen, babyfat cheek was blazing hot. Without looking at him, she nodded wordlessly.

_Fuck yes! Just like that._

She tried to say the words. Maybe he could make them out, maybe he couldn’t. She didn’t know, didn’t care.

“h’rdr” she squeaked.

He smiled up at her, darkly, dangerously.

“Love you, girl.” He turned her face to the other side, she peeped softly in gratitude. No one understood her like he did. No one ever had. No one ever would. Even Riley never suspected how deep this side of her went.

**Slap!**

She blinked her wet eyes and looked down at him. She grinned through puffy lips, nodding, closed her eyes again, gave him the signal to continue. Ignore the tears. They were the good kind of tears. Keep going. She’d kiss him with these lips if only he’d keep going, suck his cock with this swelling mouth if only he’d keep hurting her.

_Smack me when I suck it. Hit me while it’s in my mouth._

**Slap!** The same cheek as before, wetter now from all the tears.

 **Slap!** Her tit ached, swelling, expanding.

 **Slap!** Her face burned. Her cheeks were puffy and red and slick with flowing tears.

 **Slap!** The other tit. They were so large now that she was sure she could smother him with them.

 **Slap!** The other cheek. The nuns used to say something about the other cheek. She couldn’t remember what.

 **Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!** He was holding her chin in place with his hand, smacking her hard, sculpting and shaping the lust on her face: cheek, mouth, cheek, cheek, mouth, cheek, mouth – forming her features into something better, purer, revealing her true face, molding his woman with fire. She began to come. She convulsed loudly.

“ohmanohmanohman” Slurred. Climaxing. Her lungs wouldn’t fill with enough air. Her new mouth would take some getting used to.

She groaned. She couldn’t make any more words dribble from her full, pouting lips, the kind of lips the women usually had in Riley’s dumb girly magazines in those glossy pictures trying to sell the reader lipstick or eyeliner or whatever other useless crap from twenty years ago that didn’t exist anymore. Ellie writhed, her whole body wreathed in flames, her cheeks blushing better than any cosmetics ever sold, her eyes perfectly shadowed and sexy. Her skin glowed with rivulets of passion. Her small hands were on his chest, holding herself upright on wobbly arms. Her head drooped. She couldn’t close her mouth. She needed more air than she could get through her nose. Her eyes were little waterfalls, showering him with salty rain. Scalding hot steam jetted from her mouth, washing down over him as she tried to say his name, tried to tell him how much she loved him. He knew. He could tell from the way her pussy broiled his skin.

“loveyouloveyou” she wept, sobbing, panting, riding the tail of the first orgasm all the way to the shore.

She was virginal. Wanton. Perverted. Ready. He couldn’t hold back any longer.

**Rip!**

She gasped, her head jerked up, she looked over her shoulder, tried to see through watery, unfocused eyes.

**_Ri-i-i-i-p!_ **

He was tearing her clothes, ripping them from her body. Bright blue bottoms and white cotton panties, coming apart easily in his determined hands. She could feel the cool air of the room on her bare ass. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the world out so she could focus on what came next. A second, tiny orgasm, or maybe an aftershock of the first, fluttered through her. This was dangerous. She’d unleashed something in him she couldn’t control. She was at his mercy. It was exactly what she had wanted and it was even scarier than she had hoped it would be. The realization got all tangled up in the ripples of pleasure. She tucked her head against her shoulder, hiding her face, and whimpered.

“Reckon you deserve this, you little tease.” A deep, scary rumble of a voice. No mercy for her.

She squeaked, her arms give out. She dropped to her elbows, barely propped on top of him. The ragged clothing fell apart around her spread thighs. She pressed her face against his chest. Her naked ass and sopping wet pussy jutted up into the open air shamelessly.

“fuckjoeldoitdoitspankm-”

**Smack! Smack! Smack!**

“FUCK!”

**Smack!Smack!Smack!Smack _smacksmack!_**

Her round little ass was on fire, the bare cheeks seared red from his hand. She could feel the air slipping in below, sneaking in through the tatters of cloth, tickling the back of her dripping cunt where he had violently exposed her. She wanted him inside her. When the spanking finally ended, she sat up, or tried to. His big hands helped her make the journey. What’s left of her clothes was kinked tightly around her thighs. Her dripping pussy was exposed, burning out of control. She could feel him between her legs again, hard and hot beneath her naked cunt. She ground it against him, smearing him with her boiling wetness. He grunted and sought the curves of her body with his rough hands. She cried, wailed, the tears wouldn’t stop. Her tits felt like two comically enormous balloons, swollen and ready to pop, with long, thick, pink magic markers where her nipples had been, reaching and straining towards him, ready to shoot off and fly around the room like bottle rockets. Her red, puffy face baked the tears she made. They sizzled as she shed them. His hands were on her tits, he squeezed her nipples; she imagined them as long and distended, each one filling a fist. In her mind, he could have almost jerked her off with these distended things of hers. None of it made sense but she wanted it all to be true. She licked her puffy lips with her tongue. She wanted to be a freak and she hated herself. He pushed his hips up, pressing his hard shaft against the the fat lips of her engorged cunt and the boiling magma simmering inside. She couldn’t contain it. It was going to spill out of her and set the entire room on fire.

“wantitsomuch” Squeaky. Whimpering.

“You’re gonna get it tonight, girl,” she heard the dangerous earthquake of his voice from somewhere far below her. “All of it. No more waitin’.”

“yesss”

“Gonna fuck the hell out of you, little girl.”

“y’sssss”

Her heart was racing, overjoyed, terrified. It was all happening so fast. So many weeks together, day and night, turning to months, not touching, not really, not like that, even though they’d been sleeping side by side, eating, talking, sharing, really getting to know one another in the way she’d always wanted, with Joel finally opening up to her, a little bit here and a little bit there, with more and more scraps slithering out every day, as he had told her about who he used to be, way back when, sharing parts of himself, just a little bit, here and there, never all at once, and never much, but enough for her to start putting the bits and pieces together, loving him, being loved by him, even if he had never said the words before tonight, even if she just had and in so doing, had found out that she was still afraid to say them, but knowing all the same, seeing it in his eyes, hearing the words between all the other words he speaks, sharing himself with her, finally, letting her into his heart, and letting her eat that entire can of banana cream pie filling last week because he said he hated the stuff even though it was so fucking delicious and he wouldn’t even stay in the room while she had shoveled it into her mouth because just the smell made him sick or so he had said and she had eaten it quickly while he waited outside with the snow falling choosing to be in the cold rather than around the smell of banana cream and now the rafters overhead were catching fire and the sounds of her torment filled the air and smoke filled her lungs, meat, burning, and not animal meat, but something else, and she ground her hips, pushing her agonized, needy, greedy sex against the hard meat of the bearded, dangerous man beneath her, needing him, wanting him, knowing she was food for him after he raped her, or something even worse after he’d fucked a baby into her, because once that happened he’d keep her around instead and they’d do this every day, fucking and fucking, making as many babies as they could, and they’d never finish that poker game and he’d never get his ass smoked again by the queen of Chinese checkers, and he was her king and he felt so good pressed against her pussy and she wanted to take the ruined bottoms off too since they were just hanging loosely around her hips so she wanted him to hurry and rip the rest of them off like she ripped his face apart and there was blood flying everywhere and she was grinding and grinding and he was so hard and she wanted to come and she had to hurry because his head was already in a million pieces and it was getting worse each time she brought the machete down and her arms were getting tired and one of his eyes was laying off to the side looking at the fire spreading so fast and the jaw was only hanging on to one side of his face because there wasn’t much left of the other side and he was cupping her tits, massaging them, taking some of the wonderful pain out and she was shuddering and she wanted to come but she needed to take off the rest of her clothes and her face was still on fire and most of his face was gone now, it was all just triangles and squares of bone, and there was teeth too, all mixed in with the fresh stew meat she’d made and the tangled criss-cross strips of scalp or maybe it was what left of his beard, and the other eye was still there, just staring up at her, with no face around it anymore, just staring up from the red mush, and she was crying and sobbing and her hands were on her face trying to hide from that eye and Joel was saying something but it didn’t make any sense and she couldn’t stop crying and he was holding her and the room was dark and the blankets of the hide-a-bed were all tangled around them and nothing he was saying was the right thing to say and so she cried because she couldn’t do anything else and the whole world was just fire smoke and blood.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always loved surrealism. Melting clocks, pictures of pipes that aren’t actually pipes (they’re only pictures of pipes), Fantastic Planet, Heavy Traffic, Little Ego, El Topo, Eraserhead, pretty much everything Satoshi Kon did, you name it. I love a good trippy story. I think this stems from the fact that I have very vivid dreams. Often they seem to flow together and I wake up unsure of where I am for a few seconds – I love that moment! Damn, I look forward to bedtime. On a really good night, the inside of my noggin is like one of those funny Old spice commercials, the ones with Isaiah Mustafa or Terry Crews, take your pick. One night I dreamed I was hiding from my boss in a hot dog cart across the street from work – I had to make sure those giant tongs didn’t get me. I wanted to get out of work, not be served up as lunch! (Actual dream, not joking) That’s why I wrote this long story, paragraph after paragraph, with no clear breaks of any kind. I wanted Ellie’s waking and dreaming worlds to flow together strangely, compellingly, and (hopefully) more than a bit unsettlingly, as you, the reader, went on the journey with her through her damaged psyche.
> 
> A big help in putting this one-shot together was Brett Kahr's book, Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head? The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies. He takes the Freudian approach that most of what we carry around in our heads as adults stem from what happened to us as children, so keep that in mind if you plan on buying it. Reading the various anecdotes he relates was eye opening, to say the least. It gave me permission, so to speak, to really delve deep into what the damaged psyche of a traumatized teenage girl might be like, and the dark and deeply uncomfortable places that her subconscious might turn to in search of safety and comfort.
> 
> As long as this one-shot is, it was originally much longer. I assembled it in scraps to help maintain the stream of consciousness I wanted the story to have. Sigh. So much got cut out. One of my favorite bits was a scene in which Joel talked, just a little bit, to Ellie about his marriage. Another was Ellie finding a bundle of emergency road flares. I had to give up these scenes. Too much surrealism, and the effect would be lost, I think. The scenes of the real world also got fewer and sparser while the dream world came to dominate the story until, finally, it all gets mixed together in the steamy, violent finale.  
> Is this the first story to need a Joel/Tommy or Joel/David tag? Probably not, but I kind of hope it is. Either way, I apologize for nothing! (And I’m afraid to look, to be honest. Some stones are best left unturned) ;-)
> 
> You can’t actually cut a galvanized chain with a propane torch, but The Last of Us trends towards video game logic. If Naughty Dog thinks filling a coffee can with scissors and fertilizer will create a motion-sensing smart bomb, then I can have Joel cut through steel with a plumber’s torch. Hell, in the game we cobble together a scope for Joel’s rifle using only a handful of washers, wingnuts, and wood screws. How does that work?! More realistically, snowmobiles are like dirt bikes: very simple machines. I have no problem believing they could find a working Arctic Cat twenty years on. Also, people drink twenty-year-old tea, apparently. It’s a gourmet item, or so Michelle informs me. Speaking of…
> 
> Michelle picked out Jill Scott’s song “So Gone (What My Mind Says)” as the soundtrack for the hot Joel-on-Tommy action. I was going to use something else, but she convinced me that my “old fart taste in music” was not in keeping with Riley’s character (it’s her mix tape that Ellie is remembering, after all). Thanks, pumpkin. I’ll be listening to my Lawrence Welk collection if anybody needs me. Oh, “Bubbles in the Wine”, you understand me like nobody else does. ;-)
> 
> Also, the reason Joel hates banana cream pie filling was given in volume one, in the chapter “Tommy.”
> 
> And that’s it for the one-shots bridging the gap between volume two and three. I’ll be back soon with the last set of stories to wrap up my extended take on The Last of Us. Thanks for reading!


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